aspect run builds a target and executes the resulting binary — the same job bazel run does, but routed through the Aspect task lifecycle so it gets the same retry-on-transient-error, status updates, and CI integrations as aspect build and aspect test.
-- are forwarded to the target binary unchanged. Arguments before -- are interpreted by the task itself.
Forwarding Bazel flags
Pass build-time Bazel flags with--bazel-flag (repeatable):
--bazel-startup-flag. Note that changing startup flags restarts the Bazel server:
When to use aspect run
- Local development — same lifecycle as
aspect build/aspect test, so debug output looks the same. - CI smoke tests — running a binary as a pipeline step works exactly like a build or test step. No special wrapping required.
- One-off scripts — invoke a binary built from source without writing a wrapper script.
aspect run waits for the spawned binary to exit before completing.