Bug: Unable to Exclude `META-INF/MANIFEST.MF` in ZipFilterAction After rules_android v0.6.5 Update

[ThomasCJY]

Description

Since the update to rules_android v0.6.5, which migrates the ZipFilterAction to use the C++ singlejar implementation instead of the legacy Java implementation, we are unable to successfully exclude the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file using zip filters.

The new C++ singlejar implementation incorporates logic from the upstream Bazel change (bazelbuild/bazel@1a70d7e). Specifically, the output_jar.cc source file appears to contain logic that persists the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file in the output JAR, effectively ignoring any defined filter for this specific path:

Relevant code in Bazel: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/blob/1a70d7e5e3d977e054fc18f925f3e7c3fc452370/src/tools/singlejar/output_jar.cc#L68

This change breaks existing build configurations that rely on excluding this manifest file during JAR merging/filtering operations.

Reproduction

The issue can be observed when attempting to filter out META-INF/MANIFEST.MF in a rule using _common.filter_zip_exclude:

Example Code Snippet:

_common.filter_zip_exclude(
    ctx,
    out,
    merged_jar,
    filters = ["META-INF/MANIFEST.MF"] + exclude_filters,
)

Expected Result: The resulting out JAR file should not contain META-INF/MANIFEST.MF.
Actual Result: The resulting out JAR file still contains META-INF/MANIFEST.MF.

Simple Reproduction (Based on Bazel's Code)

Take the existing simple unit test for output_jar in Bazel: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/blob/1a70d7e5e3d977e054fc18f925f3e7c3fc452370/src/tools/singlejar/output_jar_simple_test.cc#L646.

Add a new test case that attempts to filter out the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF entry.

The test case will fail, demonstrating that the exclusion filter is ignored for this specific entry.

[ted-xie]

This behavior is inherent in singlejar, which we're using for speedy zip operations in ZipFilterAction. There may be a way to address this, but it'll require a change to singlejar.