According to Build systems à la carte, "it is not possible to express dynamic dependencies in [Bazel's] user-defined build rules; however some of the pre-define

According to Build systems à la carte, "it is not possible to express dynamic dependencies in [Bazel's] user-defined build rules; however some of the pre-defined build rules require dynamic dependencies and the internal build engine can cope with them by using a restarting task scheduler, which is similar to that of Excel but does not use the calc chain." (p6) IME import-from-derivation and similar in Nix is usually used for importing build configurations from remote repositories. Bazel has a repository rule system that is similar: https://bazel.build/extending/repo https://bazel.build/extending/repo So to answer your question: yes from the strictest possible definition, but in practice, I believe the tradeoffs are acceptable.