Compiling Tensorflow with a custom Clang + Libc++ (instead of stdlibc++) - c++

Question

I am trying to compile tensorflow with a custom clang/llvm toolchain and using clang's native libc++ (instead of borrowing Gcc's stdlibc++).
It looks like bazel plain assumes that every clang will use Gcc's libraries because I get these errors:
$ bazel build --cxxopt=-std=c++11 --cxxopt=-stdlib=libc++ tensorflow:libtensorflow.so
INFO: Found 1 target...
INFO: From Compiling
external/protobuf/src/google/protobuf/compiler/js/embed.cc [for host]:
external/protobuf/src/google/protobuf/compiler/js/embed.cc:37:12:
warning: unused variable 'output_file' [-Wunused-const-variable]
const char output_file[] = "well_known_types_embed.cc";
^
1 warning generated.
ERROR: /home/hbucher/.cache/bazel/_bazel_hbucher/ad427c7fddd5b68de5e1cfaa7cd8c8cc/external/com_googlesource_code_re2/BUILD:11:1: undeclared inclusion(s) in rule '#com_googlesource_code_re2//:re2':
this rule is missing dependency declarations for the following files included by 'external/com_googlesource_code_re2/re2/bitstate.cc':
'/home/hbucher/install/include/c++/v1/stddef.h'
'/home/hbucher/install/include/c++/v1/__config'
I tried to hack into tools/cpp/CROSSTOOL inside bazel as some posts suggested to add the line
cxx_builtin_include_directory: "/home/hbucher/install/include/c++/v1"
but to no avail, it does not seem to make any difference.
Then I tried to follow a bazel tutorial to create a custom toolchain. The text does not help much because they are actually writing a cross tool while what I am trying to do is to tweak the existing host rules and somehow bazel seems to undo every attempt I try to tweak its parameters.
I have got to the point that is currently in my github repository https://github.com/HFTrader/BazelCustomToolchain
However it does not compile and I cannot even figure out how to start debugging this message.
$ bazel build --crosstool_top=#hbclang//:toolchain tensorflow:libtensorflow.so
.....................
ERROR: The crosstool_top you specified was resolved to
'#hbclang//:toolchain', which does not contain a CROSSTOOL file. You can
use a crosstool from the depot by specifying its label.
INFO: Elapsed time: 2.216s
I have appended these lines to my tensorflow/WORKSPACE
new_local_repository(
name="hbclang",
path="/home/hbucher/BazelCustomToolchain",
build_file = "/home/hbucher/BazelCustomToolchain/BUILD",
)
I have asked this question on bazel's google groups but they redirected me to stackoverflow. At this point I am about to give up.
Have someone attempted to do this or I'm breaking ground here?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Solved. Not in the intended way but it works for me.
export INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/install"
export CC=$INSTALL_DIR/bin/clang
export CXX=$INSTALL_DIR/bin/clang++
export CXXFLAGS="-stdlib=libc++ -L$INSTALL_DIR/lib"
export LDFLAGS="-L$INSTALL_DIR/lib -lm -lrt"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/lib:/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/:$INSTALL_DIR/lib"
git clone https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow.git tensorflow-github
cd tensorflow-github
mkdir build-tmp && cd build-tmp
cmake ../tensorflow/contrib/cmake/
make -j4
Easy as 1-2-3 with cmake

Answer 2

[2020-05-24: Edit to make the answer up to date.]
TLDR: To build a project with Bazel with a specific Clang binary, and with libc++, this works for me (where INSTALL_DIR is where I've installed llvm):
CC="$INSTALL_DIR/bin/clang" \
BAZEL_CXXOPTS="-stdlib=libc++:-isystem$INSTALL_DIR/include" \
BAZEL_LINKOPTS="-stdlib=libc++" \
BAZEL_LINKLIBS="-L$INSTALL_DIR/lib:-Wl,-rpath,$INSTALL_DIR/lib:-lc++:-lm" \
bazel test //...
Background:
You can use --repo_env option, e.g. --repo_env=CC=clang, to put these defaults into your project- or system-wide .bazelrc.
This approach uses Bazel's C++ toolchain autoconfiguration which doesn't attempt to declare all the toolchain inputs in BUILD files. This is to simplify the configuration for the user. Therefore whenever you modify the C++ toolchain in a way that Bazel cannot know about (rebuild llvm etc.), you have to run bazel clean --expunge to flush the cache and rerun the autoconfiguration the next time.
The robust solution to specifying C++ toolchain in Bazel is to use the CcToolchainConfigInfo. See the documentation at https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/tutorial/cc-toolchain-config.html and https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/cc-toolchain-config-reference.html.