WARNING: Couldn't auto load rules or symbols

[criemen]

Description of the bug:

I've tried out 8.0.0rc1 on our codebase, and we're seeing

WARNING: Couldn't auto load rules or symbols, because no dependency on module/repository 'protobuf' found. This will result in a failure if there's a reference to those rules or symbols.
WARNING: Couldn't auto load rules or symbols, because no dependency on module/repository 'rules_android' found. This will result in a failure if there's a reference to those rules or symbols.

We're not actively using either of these rules in our codebase, but I wouldn't rule out that we have them as transitive dependencies in our dependency tree.
We're using bzlmod, our WORKSPACE file exists and is empty.

How can we silence these warnings? They are not helpful for us, and I'd be reluctant to roll out this upgrade to our users, as they'll be confused by warnings that aren't actionable or relevant to them.

Which category does this issue belong to?

No response

What's the simplest, easiest way to reproduce this bug? Please provide a minimal example if possible.

No response

Which operating system are you running Bazel on?

macos

What is the output of bazel info release?

8.0.0rc1

If bazel info release returns development version or (@non-git), tell us how you built Bazel.

No response

What's the output of git remote get-url origin; git rev-parse HEAD ?

No response

If this is a regression, please try to identify the Bazel commit where the bug was introduced with bazelisk --bisect.

No response

Have you found anything relevant by searching the web?

No response

Any other information, logs, or outputs that you want to share?

Slack discussion: https://bazelbuild.slack.com/archives/CA31HN1T3/p1728481396695989

[Wyverald]

cc @comius

[comius]

You may silence the warning by removing rules_android and protobuf from incompatible_autoload_externally. At the moment that means setting it to „+@rules_java,+@rules_python,+@rules_shell“.

Futhermore if you have load statements for some of the remaining rules or if you’re not using them, you may also omit them from the flag.