title: What is the purpose of runfiles in Bazel?
body: <p>I am trying to understand <a href="https://bazel.build/rules/lib/runfiles" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;runfiles&quot;</a> in Bazel.</p>
  <ul>
  <li>What is the purpose of runfiles in Bazel?</li>
  <li>What do runfiles achieve that could not be accomplished by placing files at a predictable relative path to an executable?</li>
  <li>Why are there runfiles libraries for various target languages?</li>
  </ul>