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That's not exactly true, for example see https://github.com/grailbio/bazel-toolchain

I am glad there is work going towards bazel-ifying the toolchain! And maybe now that 1.0 is out, we will see more work like this.

However, I think my point still stands -- this work looks pretty experimental. And most tutorials, including bazel's own [0], recommend using default configuration, which uses system compiler. And most of the examples I have seen also rely on system compiler.

[0] https://docs.bazel.build/versions/master/tutorial/cpp.html

For the record, in the beginning Bazel does not support using auto-configured system compiler at all. The only thing it supports is using a controlled build environment and hardcode all paths (including compiler paths), or using a checked-in toolchain. But at a later stage a dumb autoconf-y "detect system toolchain and try to use it" thing was added and it became default.

This is because configuring a checked-in toolchain in Bazel needs tremendous effort and very specific knowledge about something 99.9% of developers does not know and DOES NOT WANT to know or spend their time on.

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