Remove hack for building Python support with Bazel.

This change makes use of new imports attribute for Bazel's Python rules, which
enable adding directories to the PYTHONPATH. This allows us to remove
the hack for building protobuf's Python support with Bazel and now
allows projects to include protobuf using a Bazel external repository
rather than requiring it to be imported directly into the source tree as
//google/protobuf.

This change also updates the protobuf BUILD file to use a named
repository, @python//, for including Python headers rather than
//util/python. This allows projects to specify their own package for
Python headers when including protobuf with an external repository.

Fixes #1230

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/util/python/BUILD b/util/python/BUILD
index 358c381c..3ac03856 100644
--- a/util/python/BUILD
+++ b/util/python/BUILD
@@ -1,7 +1,17 @@
 # This is a placeholder for python headers. Projects needing to use
 # fast cpp protos in protobuf's python interface should build with
 # --define=use_fast_cpp_protos=true, and in addition, provide
-# //util/python:python_headers dependency that in turn provides Python.h.
+# //external:python_headers dependency that in turn provides Python.h.
+#
+# Projects that include protobuf using a Bazel external repository will need to
+# add a workspace rule to their WORKSPACE files to add an external workspace
+# that includes the Python headers. For example, the protobuf WORKSPACE file
+# includes the following local_repository rule that points to this directory:
+#
+# new_local_repository(
+#   name = "python",
+#   path = __workspace_dir__ + "/util/python",
+# )
 cc_library(
     name = "python_headers",
     visibility = ["//visibility:public"],