[Bug]: bazel lint //... leads to No aspects enabled for linting. ... even though config.yaml file exists

[codrin-lanterne]

What happened?

Running bazel lint //... leads to

No aspects enabled for linting.
                
Add a section like the following to your .aspect/cli/config.yaml:

lint:
  aspects:
    - //tools:lint.bzl%eslint

Running bazel lint --aspect:config "$(pwd)/.aspect/cli/config.yaml" //... from the same directory, the root of the Bazel monorepo, works.

Version

Development (host) and target OS/architectures: Ubuntu 18.04

Output of bazel --version: aspect 5.8.20

Version of the Aspect rules, or other relevant rules from your
WORKSPACE or MODULE.bazel file: aspect_bazel_lib 1.38.0, aspect_rules_lint 0.10.0

Language(s) and/or frameworks involved: not sure if relevant, the bazel lint command doesn't seem to properly locate the configuration file.

How to reproduce

No response

Any other information?

No response

[alexeagle]

Oops, I'm sorry we missed your original issue on aspect-cli repo. I'm not able to reproduce.

You report that --aspect:config "$(pwd)/.aspect/cli/config.yaml" fixes it - it looks like something in your environment causes the Aspect CLI to look for its configuration file in a non-standard location. By explicitly pointing it back to the standard location, it's fixed.

[codrin-lanterne]

No worries! Hmm, yeah, that's right, do you have any ideas on how I could investigate this? It seems to happen on my teammates machines as well so I'm wondering if there are any investigation leads I could follow.

[dansheerhealth]

We hit this too, looks like it has something to do with workspace detection.

The workaround we used:

In .bazelrc file:

common --enable_bzlmod

Add empty WORKSPACE.bazel file in workspace root.

[codrin-lanterne]

Thank you for sharing, that did fix it!

[alexeagle]

Could either of you share what the repository looked like before adding that workaround?

From the code here https://github.com/aspect-build/aspect-cli/blob/main/pkg/bazel/workspace/finder.go#L27 I'd expect you need a WORKSPACE or WORKSPACE.bazel file, but that's required for any Bazel project to function at all. Were you trying out lint in a new Bazel project that couldn't even build?

[dansheerhealth]

In our repository there was a WORKSPACE.bzlmod file, but not a WORKSPACE or WORKSPACE.bazel file. Docs seemed kind of confusing about still needing a WORKSPACE file.

Also, found bazelbuild/vscode-bazel#323