Unpredictable "missing input file" error

[drigz]

Twice we have seen an error looking like this:

ERROR: missing input file '@org_apache_httpcomponents_httpclient//jar:httpclient-4.0.1.jar'
ERROR: [SNIP]/src/java/BUILD.bazel:105:1: //src/java:cloud_registry: missing input file '@org_apache_httpcomponents_httpclient//jar:httpclient-4.0.1.jar'
ERROR: [SNIP]/src/java/BUILD.bazel:105:1 1 input file(s) do not exist
INFO: Elapsed time: 420.080s, Critical Path: 127.06s
FAILED: Build did NOT complete successfully

The missing jar is not always the same. Retrying the build doesn't help, but bazel clean --expunge does. Unfortunately I don't have a way to reproduce it, but it seems to happen when the system hasn't rebuilt the Java targets in a while (maybe due to changes in the version on Maven?)

I know this isn't a very helpful bug report :) I'm posting in case anyone else is experiencing the same issue.

[kerinin]

I had the same problem, also have no idea how to reproduce it, and bazel clean --expunge fixed it.

[yinanfang]

I had the same problem too

[excavador]

I met this problem in following case: do NOT specify executable=True in rule but return DefaultInfo provider with executable inside