Bazel rules for downloading Steam apps

These rules make Steam applications available as Bazel repositories.

Limitations:

• Authentication is not supported so only free-to-download apps may be used
• External automation is required for application updates

Setup

Add rules_steam to MODULE.bazel

bazel_dep(name = "rules_steam")

git_override(
    module_name = "rules_steam",
    commit = "...",
    remote = "https://github.com/lanofdoom/rules_steam.git",
)

Create update-steamapps.sh script

#!/bin/bash -ue
cd $(dirname $0)

bazel run @rules_steam//generate -- --app 42 --repo my_game_server --out $(pwd)/steamapps.bzl
bazel mod deps

This script generates a bazel module extension file that will create repositories containing Steam apps.

Pass --files (repeatable) to limit what gets downloaded, e.g. --files 'regex:^srcds_linux64$' --files 'regex:^bin/linux64/libsteam_api\.so$'. Each value becomes a DepotDownloader -filelist entry (a path, or a regex:-prefixed pattern) and is applied to every depot in the generated file.

Load generated extension in MODULE.bazel

steamapps = use_extension("//:steamapps.bzl", "steamapps_bzlmod")
use_repo(steamapps, "my_game_server")

Consume the content

Once configured, these rules produce pkg_files targets available like @my_game_server//:files.

Those rules can be used to produce any of the other rules_pkg package formats for further use. For example:

pkg_tar(
    name = "my_game_server",
    srcs = ["@my_game_server//:files"],
    package_dir = "/opt/scpsl",
)

Set up automated updates

Configure automation to periodically run the update script and commit the results.

See update-example.yml for one approach. For annoying reasons, this requires permissions beyond the standard GITHUB_TOKEN, so a personal or application token must be used as explained in the GitHub Docs.