This showcases how to build a single file to create a runnable application.

This BUILD file shows that we want to build a C++ binary using the cc_binary rule provided by Bazel. In the cc_binary rule, name of the binary is specified in name attribute (in this example, it's hello-world), required source files to be built are provided in srcs attribute.

cc_binary(
    name = "hello-world",
    srcs = ["hello-world.cc"],
)

To build this example, use

bazel build //main:hello-world

If the build is successful, Bazel prints the output similar to

____Loading complete.  Analyzing...
____Found 1 target...
____Building...
Target //main:hello-world up-to-date:
  C:/tools/msys64/tmp/_bazel_woden/vqeu6v3v/execroot/__main__/bazel-out/msvc_x64-fastbuild/bin/main/hello-world.exe
____Elapsed time: 0,400s, Critical Path: 0,01s

In the run log above you can see where the executable was built so you can locate it and use it.

You can also get the output path with the bazel cquery command. For example, the command below would print the path to the output file. This is a useful technique for use in scripts, where you do not want to parse the bazel build output.

bazel cquery --output=files //main:hello-world