You could be right about Bazel's unsuitability for open source software. > The following constructs have been added to the core build language: if statements,

You could be right about Bazel's unsuitability for open source software. > The following constructs have been added to the core build language: if statements, for loops, and function definitions The whole point of using a declaratively-configured build product rather than procedural scripts is to simplify the logic and be easily extendable. Maven provided the declarative DSL and removed totally the procedural language so you needed an addon like polyglot-maven to do anything "out of the box". Gradle then added the whole procedural language back in to be used with the DSL, but it's hardly used as most build scripts out there are just standard 30-liners. Perhaps Bazel's way of providing just enough procedural features (sequencing, selection, iteration, subroutines), and no more, with the declarative DSL is the best mix.