[ARROW-17763] [C++] Allow Bazel to pass custom __DATE__, __TIME__, and __TIMESTAMP__ flags to Arrow's toolchain

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 9.0.0
• Component/s: C++
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/32992
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Stefan Novak
• Created: 17/Sep/22 10:10
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 11:55

Description

Hello!

I've been looking into incorporating Arrow into a Bazel build build project and have been having some challenges getting it to work.

I've been using Bazel's rules_foreign_cc to call CMake, however the build process is erroring out as described by another community member.

One thing that I've learned: Bazel's C++ integration will specify __DATE__, __TIME__, and __TIMESTAMP__ flags to ensure reproducible builds.

These values are expected to be quoted strings. However, when Arrow's toolchain translates CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS to ARROW_CXX_COMPILER_FLAGS, CMake is calling configure_file(...) with the ESCAPE_QUOTES option which is mucking up the parsing.

Does anyone happen to have any recommendations for a workaround or a fix?

Thank you! I appreciate everyone's efforts in continuing to develop Arrow.

Cheers,
Stefan