It can sometimes be helpful to see a visual representation of a Bazel build graph. The query command supports this by letting you pipe output to Graphviz. However larger graphs quickly become a tangled mess of edges that are impossible to follow.
Skyscope is a new tool that aims to solve this problem. Instead of trying to render a large build graph in its entirety, only a few nodes are displayed at a time. You can click on various parts of the graph to display currently hidden nodes or hide visible ones. You can also search for nodes to display (e.g. by label or filename). This allows you to ""focus in"" on a particular area of interest, while keeping the complexity manageable.
The graphs are imported from Skyframe — Bazel’s evaluation and incrementality model — so Skyscope should also be useful to people who want to understand more about how this part of Bazel works.
Speaker: Ben Radford
