Examples of how time stamping works.

How it works

Target declarations may use the stamp attribute to control the time stamping of files in an archive. The behavior follows the pattern of the cc_binary rule:

https://docs.bazel.build/versions/main/be/c-cpp.html#cc_binary

Read the BUILD file for more details.

Try this

bazel build :* 
for tarball in bazel-bin/*.tar ; do
  echo ==== $tarball
  tar tvf $tarball
done

bazel build :*  --stamp=1
for tarball in bazel-bin/*.tar ; do
  echo ==== $tarball
  tar tvf $tarball
done

You should see something like:

INFO: Build completed successfully, 3 total actions
==== bazel-bin/always_stamped.tar
-r-xr-xr-x  0 0      0         968 May  3 17:34 BUILD
==== bazel-bin/controlled_by_stamp_option.tar
-r-xr-xr-x  0 0      0         968 Dec 31  1999 BUILD
==== bazel-bin/never_stamped.tar
-r-xr-xr-x  0 0      0         968 Dec 31  1999 BUILD
INFO: Build option --stamp has changed, discarding analysis cache.
INFO: Build completed successfully, 3 total actions
==== bazel-bin/always_stamped.tar
-r-xr-xr-x  0 0      0         968 May  3 17:34 BUILD
==== bazel-bin/controlled_by_stamp_option.ta
-r-xr-xr-x  0 0      0         968 May  6 17:42 BUILD
==== bazel-bin/never_stamped.tar
-r-xr-xr-x  0 0      0         968 Dec 31  1999 BUILD