Common dependency namespace

[mainrs]

Currently, each crate has its own namespace defined. Although the prefix can be set, the crate name has to be appended to it.

Would it be possible to somehow make it that all crates have the same namespace? E.g.:

@blackjack_cargo_lock//:cargo_lock
@blackjack_cargo_metadata//:cargo_metadata

# becomes...
@blackjack//:cargo_lock
@blackjack//:cargo_lock

Not sure if there is a technical reason for the separate namespaces. But I think that the second one is easier to understand and feels overall a little bit cleaner.

[wildarch]

The technical reason behind this is that for every crate in the dependency graph, we generate an http_archive rule and the corresponding BUILD file to build the crate. I don't think there is an easy way around that.

What we could do however is make the names of these http_archives an implementation detail, and expose the crates via a dedicated workspace (in your example it would be called blackjack) that contains aliases to the actual crates, exposing them under convenient names such as @blackjack//:cargo_lock.

I'm not sure how we would set up a workspace like that, maybe with a repository rule?