How to create a rule from within another rule in Bazel - bazel

Question

Situation
I have two Skylark extension rules: blah_library and blah_binary. All of a blah_library's transitive dependencies are propagated by returning a provider(transitive_deps=...), and are handled appropriately by any ultimate dependent blah_binary target.
What I want to do
I want each blah_library to also create a filegroup with all the transitive dependencies mentioned above, so that I can access them separately. E.g., I'd like to be able to pass them in as data dependencies to a cc_binary. In other words:
# Somehow have this automatically create a target named `foo__trans_deps`?
blah_library(
name = "foo",
srcs = [...],
deps = [...],
)
cc_binary(
...,
data = [":foo__trans_deps"],
)
How should I do this? Any help would be appreciated!
What I've tried
Make a macro
I tried making a macro like so:
_real_blah_library = rule(...)
def blah_library(name, *args, **kwargs):
native.filegroup(
name = name + "__trans_deps",
srcs = ???,
)
_real_blah_library(name=name, *args, **kwargs)
But I'm not sure how to access the provider provided by _real_blah_library from within the macro, so I don't know how to populate the filegroup's srcs field...
Modify the blah_library rule's implementation
Right now I have something like:
_blah_provider = provider(fields=['transitive_deps'])
def _blah_library_impl(ctx):
...
trans_deps = []
for dep in ctx.attr.deps:
trans_deps += dep[_blah_provider].trans_deps
return _blah_provider(trans_deps=trans_deps)
blah_library = rule(impl=_blah_library_impl, ...)
I tried adding the following to _blah_library_impl, but it didn't work because apparently native.filegroup can't be called within a rule's implementation ("filegroup() cannot be called during the analysis phase"):
def _blah_library_impl(ctx):
...
trans_deps = []
for dep in ctx.attr.deps:
trans_deps += dep[_blah_provider].trans_deps
native.filegroup(
name = ctx.attr.name + "__trans_deps",
srcs = trans_deps,
)
return _blah_provider(trans_deps=trans_deps)

Answer 1

You can't easily create a filegroup like that, but you can still achieve what you want.
If you want to use the rule in genrule.srcs, filegroup.srcs, cc_binary.data, etc., then return a DefaultInfo provider (along with _blah_provider) and set the files field to the transitive closure of files.
You can refine the solution if you want a different set of files when the rule is in a data attribute vs. when in any other (e.g. srcs): just also set the runfiles-related members in DefaultInfo. (Frankly I don't know the difference between them, I'd just set all runfiles-fields to the same value.)

Answer 2

I ended up making my own special filegroup-like rule, as discussed in the comments under #Laszlo's answer. Here's the raw code in case it's a useful starting point for anyone:
def _whl_deps_filegroup_impl(ctx):
input_wheels = ctx.attr.src[_PyZProvider].transitive_wheels
output_wheels = []
for wheel in input_wheels:
file_name = wheel.basename
output_wheel = ctx.actions.declare_file(file_name)
# TODO(josh): Use symlinks instead of copying. Couldn't figure out how
# to do this due to issues with constructing absolute paths...
ctx.actions.run(
outputs=[output_wheel],
inputs=[wheel],
arguments=[wheel.path, output_wheel.path],
executable="cp",
mnemonic="CopyWheel")
output_wheels.append(output_wheel)
return [DefaultInfo(files=depset(output_wheels))]
whl_deps_filegroup = rule(
_whl_deps_filegroup_impl,
attrs = {
"src": attr.label(),
},
)