Pants 2.19.0 is released!

Photo by Erol Ahmed / Unsplash

We're pleased to announce Pants 2.19.0, the latest release of Pantsbuild, the scalable and ergonomic build system. To update, set pants_version = "2.19.0" in your pants.toml. If you're not using Pants yet, get started now.

Highlights in 2.19 include:

• New backends: semgrep and openapi-format
• Test retries for flaky Python tests
• buildx support in the Docker backend
• Using parametrize to set multiple fields in tandem
• And lots of smaller features, bugfixes, and general improvements

Keep reading to see more, or check the full release notes. Pants is an open-source project, and the below changes are all contributed by our community. If you want to see something more in the next changelog, join us on GitHub and become a contributor.

We also offer formal sponsorship tiers for companies, as well as individual sponsorships via GitHub. These help pay for the ongoing development and hosting costs, and are managed by the Pants Build non-profit organization.

New backends and subsystems

In this release, we welcome two new backends and one new subsystem.

The new openapi_format backend supports running openapi-format to format openapi_... targets. You can enable this by adding pants.backend.experimental.openapi.lint.openapi_format to the list of active backends.

The new semgrep backend supports running Semgrep as a local linter on all files that Pants knows about (any target with a source or sources field). Configuration files are automatically discovered. You can enable this by adding pants.backend.experimental.tools.semgrep to the list of active backends.

The new [system-binaries] subsystem allows controlling where Pants searches for binaries like bash, zip, tar that are used as part of normal operation. To change these paths set the system_binaries_paths option as appropriate, potentially using the <PATH> special value. This can also be changed for specific environments using the system_binaries_system_binary_paths field.

Built-in test retries (for Python)

Python tests can now be attempted multiple times, if they fail. This can help with limiting the impact of flaky tests. For instance, to require tests to fail three times before the overall pants test goal fails, set [test].attempts_default = 3. In this case, a very flaky test might fail on the first and second runs but finally pass on the third run, and thus the overall Pants invocation would pass.

This functionality can be added to any other language with not much extra work. Do you want automatic retries for Scala, Go, or another language Pants supports? Check out the tracking issue and come chat with us in #development on Slack.

Docker improvements

The docker backend now has explicit support for using buildx (and thus BuildKit), via the new use_buildx option. This also allows adding few additional fields for docker_image targets, for buildx-specific functionality:

• cache_from and cache_to for using external cache storage backends
• output to control how/where buildx outputs an image when running pants package ::

Improved parametrize for tied options

The parametrize helper now supports parametrizing multiple fields together, in lock step. For instance:

# Creates two targets:
#
# example:tests@parametrize=py2
# example:tests@parametrize=py3

python_test(
    name="tests",
    source="tests.py",
    **parametrize("py2", interpreter_constraints=["==2.7.*"], resolve="lock-a"),
    **parametrize("py3", interpreter_constraints=[">=3.6,<3.7"], resolve="lock-b"),
)

In addition, parametrize can now be used with a single value (field=parametrize("for-consistency")), and now works on target generations in more cases (particularly those with "plugin" fields).

Other noteworthy changes

• New versions of the get-pants.sh script install to ~/.local/bin, not ~/bin. Remember to update your CI pipelines!
• Environment variables that aren't valid UTF-8 no longer cause Pants to crash (note, PANTS_... environment variables that Pants needs to read but aren't UTF-8 will be ignored).
• Reference documentation for subsystem options includes how to set them in pants.toml, in addition to the environment variable and CLI arguments.
• The .pids/ internal directory is now under .pants.d/ by default, rather that adjacent to it (this can be controlled via the [GLOBAL].pants_subprocessdir option).

Much more!

Pants 2.19 involved several months of work from dozens of contributors, along with testing and feedback from the whole community. You can read the full notes. To update, set pants_version = "2.19.0" in your pants.toml.

If you're not using Pants to build, format, test (and more) your codebase, get started now - or take it to the next level as a contributor.