Prerequisites

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To run Pants, you need:

• One of:
  • Linux (x86_64)
  • MacOS (Intel or Apple Silicon, 10.15 Catalina or newer)
  • Microsoft Windows 10 with WSL 2
• Python 3.7, 3.8, or 3.9 discoverable on your PATH
• Internet access (so that Pants can fully bootstrap itself)

Python 2 compatibility

Pants requires Python 3.7, 3.8, or 3.9 to run itself, but it can build your Python 2 and Python 3.6 or earlier code, along with 3.10+.

Have restricted Internet access?

See Restricted Internet access for instructions.

System-specific notes

Linux

Some Linux distributions may need additional packages

On Ubuntu you may need to run: apt install -y python3-dev python3-distutils.

Alpine Linux is not yet supported

Pants for Linux is currently distributed as a manylinux wheel. Alpine Linux is not covered by manylinux (it uses MUSL libc while manylinux requires glibc), so at present Pants will not run on Alpine Linux.

If you need to run Pants on Alpine, let us know, so we can prioritize this work. Meanwhile, you can try building Pants yourself on Alpine.

Linux on ARM is not yet supported

Pants for Linux is currently only distributed as an x86_64 wheel.

If you need to run Pants on ARM, please upvote or comment on this issue so we can prioritize this work. Meanwhile, you can try building Pants yourself on ARM.

macOS

Apple Silicon (M1) support

We publish a macOS arm64 wheel for Python 3.9. Make sure you have Python 3.9 discoverable on your $PATH, e.g. via Homebrew or Pyenv, and an updated version of the ./pants runner script.

Given the lack of CI infrastructure for Apple Silicon, this support is best-effort and there may a delay in publishing this wheel compared to our normal releases.

If you have Python code, you may need to set your interpreter constraints to Python 3.9+, as many tools like Black will not install correctly when using earlier Python versions.

Some users have also had success with earlier versions using Rosetta by running arch -x86_64 pants.

When using Docker from your M1, you will need to use --no-watch-filesystem --no-pantsd. (Although we don't recommend permanently setting this, as these options are crucial for performance when iterating.)

Microsoft Windows

Windows 10 support

Pants runs on Windows 10 under the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL):

• Follow these instructions to install WSL 2.
• Install a recent Linux distribution under WSL 2 (we have tested with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS).
• Run sudo apt install unzip python3-dev python3-distutils python3-venv gcc in the distribution.
• You can then run Pants commands in a Linux shell, or in a Windows shell by prefixing with wsl .