Resource hub

Case Studies

Tweag

January 3, 2023
"From adopting Pants, to generalizing our CI to multiple Python versions" https://blog.pantsbuild.org/tweag-case-study/

Describes why and how the maintainers of Bazel's Haskell rules chose to use Pants for a client's Python monorepo. Also covers some gotchas for newcomers.

Oxbotica

November 4, 2022
"Introducing Pants to Oxbotica"
https://blog.pantsbuild.org/introducing-pants-to-oxbotica/

Self-driving vehicle company's successful journey to adopting Pants locally and in CI.

Coinbase

September 1, 2022
"Part 1: Building a Python ecosystem for efficient and reliable development"
https://blog.coinbase.com/building-a-python-ecosystem-for-efficient-and-reliable-development-d986c97a94a0

Describes how the company developed an efficient, reliable Python ecosystem using Pants, and solved the challenge of managing Python applications at a large scale at Coinbase.

October 27, 2022
"Part 2: Building a Python ecosystem for efficient and reliable development"
https://www.coinbase.com/blog/part-2-building-a-python-ecosystem-for-efficient-and-reliable-development

Explains the technical details of the continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) infrastructure and dependency management of the company's Python ecosystem.

IBM Developer Blog

August 24, 2022
"Incrementally migrating a Python monorepo from Bazel to Pants"
https://developer.ibm.com/blogs/case-study-incrementally-migrating-a-python-monorepo-from-bazel-to-pants/

Watson Orders is an IBM Silicon Valley based technology development group targeting the development of world-class conversational AI. This posts walks through the process of migrating off Bazel, where they maintained 19,000 lines of BUILD file metadata, to Pants where that was slashed to 2,400 lines thanks to dependency inference. CI build time for PRs dropped from 10-12 minutes with Bazel to under 4 minutes with Pants.

Astranis Space Technologies

August 12, 2022
"Astranis Case Study: Wrangling Python In a Monorepo"
https://blog.pantsbuild.org/astranis-case-study-wrangling-python-in-a-monorepo/

"...We found it incredibly easy to hook in our existing remote caching systems to Pants, and added other nice features like running tailor in a check-only mode to highlight any inconsistencies in our repo. As a side benefit, Pants has helped us gain better insight into our repository by being able to easily scan for and report the transitive dependencies of modules. Having that insight has helped us plan out how to minimize the coupling of our modules..."

Twitter Engineering

December 31, 2021
"Advancing Jupyter Notebooks at Twitter - Part 1"
https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastructure/2021/advancing-jupyter-notebooks-at-twitter---part-1--a-first-class-d

About the intersection of Twitter data science, monorepos, Pants, Pex, and the pants-jupyter-plugin.

iManage

October 2, 2021
"Putting Pants On: One Thing We Did Right After 5 Years with Django"
https://g-cassie.github.io/2021/10/02/django-pants.html

Tutorials

Doctrine.fr Engineering blog

Nov 25, 2022
"Industrialized Python code with Pylint plugins in Pants"
https://medium.com/doctrine/industrialized-python-code-with-pylint-plugins-in-pants-321d9cbad07a

What if you needed to put strict code convention rules through a linter and apply them with the help of Pants?

Suresh Joshi

April 4, 2022
"It's Pants Plugins All the Way Down"
https://sureshjoshi.com/development/pants-plugin-code-quality

A follow-up to "Your first Pants plugin" detailing how to manage code quality via plugins, continuous integration checks, and pre-commit hooks.

January 25, 2022
"Your first Pants plugin"
https://sureshjoshi.com/development/first-pants-plugin

A newcomer's walk-through of the code and experience of writing one's first Pants plugin.

Gordon Cassie

October 30, 2021
"Getting Started With Pants and Django"
https://g-cassie.github.io/2021/10/30/django-pants-tutorial-pt1.html

Podcasts

The Real Python Podcast

Episode 137: Start Using a Build System & Continuous Integration in Python
December 16, 2022

What advantages can a build system provide for a Python developer? What new skills are required when working with a team of developers? Pants core maintainer and co-author Benjy Weinberger discusses Pants and getting started with continuous integration (CI).

Happy Path Programming Podcast

Episode 72: Pants Makes Developers Happier and More Productive, with Benjy Weinberger
December 16, 2022
https://anchor.fm/happypathprogramming/episodes/72-Pants-Makes-Developers-Happier--More-Productive-with-Benjy-Weinberger-e1sc1uj

Humans of Devops

Season 3, Episode 69: The Curse of Knowledge
March 7, 2022
https://audioboom.com/posts/8043212-the-curse-of-knowledge-with-eric-arellano-and-nick-grisafi

Pants core maintainer Eric Arellano and Pants contributor Nick Grisafi discuss what Pants team has learned from philosophical concepts such as The Curse of Knowledge, Beginners Mind, and The Power of the Outsider.

Podcast.__init__

Episode 352: Simplify And Scale Your Software Development Cycles By Putting On Pants (Build Tool)
February 14, 2022
https://www.pythonpodcast.com/pants-software-development-lifecycle-tool-episode-352/

Pants core maintainers Stu Hood, Eric Arellano, and Andreas Stenius guest.

Software Engineering Daily

Build Tools with Benjy Weinberger
January 17, 2022
https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2022/01/17/build-tools-with-benjy-weinberger/

Semaphore Uncut

Episode 33: Monorepo and Building at Scale
April 13, 2021
https://semaphoreci.com/blog/monorepo-building-at-scale

Pants core maintainer Benjy Weinberger guests.

Angelneers

Episode 28: Shifting Build Execution Paradigm
February 12, 2021
https://angelneers.com/podcast/28-shifting-build-execution-paradigm/

Pants core maintainer Benjy Weinberger guests.

Podcast.__init__

Episode 290: Pants Has Got Your Python Monorepo Covered
November 23, 2020
https://www.pythonpodcast.com/pants-monorepo-build-tool-episode-290/

Pants core maintainers Stu Hood and Eric Arellano guest.

Posts & Articles

Inside Doctrine

November 25, 2022
"Industrialized python code with Pylint plugins in Pants"
https://medium.com/doctrine/industrialized-python-code-with-pylint-plugins-in-pants-321d9cbad07a

Dev.to

July 25, 2022
"Better CI/CD caching with new-gen build systems"
https://dev.to/benjyw/better-cicd-caching-with-new-gen-build-systems-3aem

How the cache solutions offered by CI providers work, why they are often of limited benefit, and how Pants supports a much more effective caching paradigm.

Software Development Times

January 18, 2022
"The monorepo approach to code management"
https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/the-monorepo-approach-to-code-management/

"If you’re responsible for your organization’s codebase architecture, then at some point you have to make some emphatic choices about how to manage growth in a scalable way..."

Semaphore Blog

June 9, 2021
"Building Python Projects at Scale with Pants"
https://t.co/WuXPqwQ9KX

Towards Data Science

Sept 3, 2020
"Building a monorepo for Data Science with Pants Build"
https://towardsdatascience.com/building-a-monorepo-for-data-science-with-pantsbuild-2f77b9ee14bd

Talks

AWS Community Day Bay Area 2022

When Projects Grow: CI/CD at scale

September 9, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLBpM3I3GHw

Pants maintainer Josh Reed gives a talk about the challenges about running CI on a large monolith codebase, and mentions Pants as part of the ensemble of soultions to help wrangle the complexity that comes with scale.

Pycon 2022

"Hermetic Environments in Pantsbuild" aka "Fast and Reproducible Tests, Packaging, and Deploys with Pantsbuild"

April 24, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0INmW9KaAp4
https://speakerdeck.com/chrisjrn/hermetic-environments-in-pantsbuild-31d03419-8a15-4cd3-9041-b817b8924b3c

Pants maintainer Chris Neugebauer gives a deep dive into the sandboxing model used by Pants, the priorities driving its design, and the pros and cons.

[LIGHTNING TALK] "Stop Running Your Tests"

April 23, 2022
https://youtu.be/r-rpo4Xm_lM?t=2799

Chris Neugebauer gives a swift and cheeky introduction to Pants.

EuroPython 2021

"Python monorepos: what, why and how"

July 30, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4stnR1gCR4
https://speakerdeck.com/benjyw/python-monorepos-what-why-and-how-europython-2021

A discussion of the advantages of monorepos for Python codebases, and the kinds of tooling and processes we can use to make working in a Python monorepo effective.

Build Meetup 2021

"Faster Incremental Builds with Speculation"

June 24, 2021
https://meetup.build/

Djangocon Europe 2021

"Managing Multiple Django Services in a Single Repo"

June 3, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glillzb_TqQ
https://cfp.2021.djangocon.eu/2021/talk/CTXYZE/

Pyninsula Meetup

"Effective Python Monorepos with the Pants Build System"

May 25, 2021
https://youtu.be/a15T-D-f9a8?t=1225 (starts at timestamp 20:25)

Pycon 2021

"Creating Extensible Workflows With Off-Label Use of Python"

May 14, 2021
https://youtu.be/HA5gzP4Ncao
https://speakerdeck.com/benjyw/creating-extensible-workflows-with-off-label-use-of-python

A dive into how Pants 2 benefits from making unconventional use of certain Python 3 features.

"Cuándo Usar Extensiones Nativas en Rust: Rendimiento Accesible y Seguro"

May 14, 2021
https://youtu.be/gMFY0uUQexE
https://speakerdeck.com/ericarellano/cuando-usar-extensiones-nativas-en-rust-rendimiento-accesible-y-seguro

Cuando hay problemas de rendimiento, las extensiones nativas de Python se empoderan para mejorar el rendimiento del "critical path", y también seguir usando Python y evitar una reinscripción costosa.

Pycon Israel 2021

"Python Monorepos: What, Why, and How"

May 3, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6ENyH4_r8U
https://speakerdeck.com/benjyw/python-monorepos-what-why-and-how

SF Python Meetup

"How the Pants Build System Leverages Python 3 Features"

May 13, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLyW6oAExW0
https://speakerdeck.com/benjyw/how-the-pants-build-system-leverages-python-3-features

YouTube

Pants Build project's official channel

Home: https://www.youtube.com/@pantsbuild
Pants Build 2 Tour: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwPRXwjURiOzXjgqydxZE9RVjZqaB6OXb

Repositories

Example: Python with Pants and PEX

"A running example of the Pants Build system and Python packaging with PEX."
https://github.com/StephanErb/pexample

Example: Pylint custom linter rules for a Python project using Pants

"A ready-to-use example of a repository that contains a Python project and Pylint custom linter rules"
https://github.com/DoctrineLegal/demo-pants-pylint

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