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Migrate away from CMake and use Bazel

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
cmake, cpp
Domain
build-system

Research direction

Start by investigating the existing CMake build and the internal Bazel setup already used for BinDiff, including the IDA plugins and UI. Map how the OSS Google dependencies such as Abseil and Protobuf are currently handled across Windows, Linux, and macOS. Done means a defined, maintainable Bazel migration plan or implementation covering the supported components and platforms.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

enhancement

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Handling C++ dependencies in CMake is difficult. Bazel makes a lot easier, especially since BinDiff needs the OSS Google stack (Abseil, Protobuf, etc. but later maybe gRPC)

Describe the solution you'd like
Bazel has decent support for Windows, Linux and macOS and its build files are easier to maintain.

Describe alternatives you've considered
N/A

Additional context
This should first be investigated, but it's definitely feasible, as we are building most of BinDiff with the internal version of Bazel already (including IDA plugins and the UI).

Dominant language
Java
Stars
3.2k
Forks
240
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

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