How to create a directory structure in bazel

I want to create the following structure in bazel.

dir1
   |_ file1
   |_ file2
   |_ dir2
         |_file3

Creating a specific structure doesn't seem trivial. I'm hoping there's a simple and reusable rule. Something like:

makedir(
  name = "dir1",
  path = "dir1",
)

makedir(
  name = "dir2",
  path = "dir1/dir2",
  deps = [":dir1"],
)

What I've tried:

• I could create a macro with a python script, but want something cleaner.
• I tried creating a genrule with mkdir -p path/to/directoy which didn't work

The use case is that I want to create a squashfs using bazel.

It's important to note that Bazel provides some packaging functions.

To create a squashfs, the command requires a directory structure populated with artifacts.

In my case, I want to create a directory structure and run mksquashfs to produce a squashfs file.

To accomplish this, I ended up modifying the basic example from bazel's docs on packaging.

load("@bazel_tools//tools/build_defs/pkg:pkg.bzl", "pkg_tar")

genrule(
    name = "file1",
    outs = ["file1.txt"],
    cmd = "echo exampleText > $@",
)

pkg_tar(
    name = "dir1",
    strip_prefix = ".",
    package_dir = "/usr/bin",
    srcs = [":file1"],
    mode = "0755",
)

pkg_tar(
    name = "dir2",
    strip_prefix = ".",
    package_dir = "/usr/share",
    srcs = ["//main:file2.txt", "//main:file3.txt"],
    mode = "0644",
)

pkg_tar(
    name = "pkg",
    extension = "tar.gz",
    deps = [
        ":dir1",
        ":dir2",
    ],
)

If there's an easier way to create a tar or directory structure without the need for intermediate tars, I'll make that top answer.