Bazel Cookbook

Use mise to install the Bazel version declared in a project's .bazelversion file. This avoids repeating the version in mise.toml.

Use a project's .bazelversion

Enable idiomatic version files for bazel:

mise settings add idiomatic_version_file_enable_tools bazel

For example, a project can select Bazel 7.2.1 with this file:

.bazelversion

7.2.1

From that project, install the selected tools and check Bazel:

mise install
mise exec -- bazel --version

Use mise tool bazel --requested to inspect the version request read by mise. If the project also configures Bazel in mise.toml, remove that duplicate entry to let .bazelversion select the version.

Supported values

mise reads only the first line of .bazelversion. It accepts concrete release versions, including release candidates and prereleases:

Value	Read by mise?
7.2.1	Yes
8.0.0rc1	Yes
5.0.0-pre.20210317.1	Yes
latest, latest-1, last_green, last_rc, rolling	No
8.x, 8.*	No
A commit hash or <FORK>/<VERSION>	No

Unsupported values supply no version request, even if a later line contains a supported version. To select Bazel independently of such a file, configure it explicitly:

mise use bazel@7.2.1

Using Bazelisk instead

Bazelisk is a launcher that reads .bazelversion itself and manages the corresponding Bazel installation. If your project relies on Bazelisk's version selectors, install Bazelisk with mise and let it interpret the file:

mise use bazelisk
mise exec -- bazelisk --version

The version in .bazelversion applies to Bazel, not Bazelisk. Enabling idiomatic version files for bazelisk does not select a Bazelisk version from that file.