We used to maintain third_party libraries with bazel http_archive rule. However, I found it quite frequently to make patches on third_party libraries for bugfixes, dependencies redirection, etc. Such patching stuffs are not easy to take with http_archive rule because the source code is invisible. The invisible of third_party source code also bother daily development. Copybara would vendor third_party source code into our repository, maintaining the changings by transformers. I'll buy in copybara for third_party libraries management.
We used to maintain third_party libraries with bazel http_archive rule. However, I found it quite frequently to make patches on third_party libraries for bugfixes, dependencies redirection, etc. Such patching stuffs are not easy to take with http_archive rule because the source code is invisible. The invisible of third_party source code also bother daily development. Copybara would vendor third_party source code into our repository, maintaining the changings by transformers. I'll buy in copybara for third_party libraries management.