HomeDocs
DocsCommunityTestimonialsUsersGitHubTwitterBlogJobsTermsPrivacyCookies
TermsPrivacyCookies
Hey! These docs are for version 2.12, which is no longer officially supported. Click here for the latest version, 2.15!

Command line help

How to dynamically get more information on Pants's internals.

Run ./pants help to get basic help, including a list of commands you can run to get more specific help:

❯ ./pants help

Pants 2.8.0

Usage:

  ./pants [option ...] [goal ...] [file/target ...]   Attempt the specified goals on the specified files/targets.
  ./pants help                                        Display this usage message.
  ./pants help goals                                  List all installed goals.
  ./pants help targets                                List all installed target types.
  ./pants help subsystems                             List all configurable subsystems.
  ./pants help tools                                  List all external tools.
  ./pants help global                                 Help for global options.
  ./pants help-advanced global                        Help for global advanced options.
  ./pants help [target_type/goal/subsystem]           Help for a target type, goal or subsystem.
  ./pants help-advanced [goal/subsystem]              Help for a goal or subsystem's advanced options.
  ./pants help-all                                    Print a JSON object containing all help info.

  [file] can be:
     path/to/file.ext
     A path glob, such as '**/*.ext', in quotes to prevent premature shell expansion.

  [target] can be:
    path/to/dir:target_name.
    path/to/dir for a target whose name is the same as the directory name.
    path/to/dir:  to include all targets in the specified directory.
    path/to/dir:: to include all targets found recursively under the directory.

Documentation at https://www.pantsbuild.org
Download at https://pypi.org/pypi/pantsbuild.pants/2.8.0

For example, to get help on the test goal:

$ ./pants help test

`test` goal options
-------------------

Run tests.

Config section: [test]

  --[no-]test-debug
  PANTS_TEST_DEBUG
  debug
      default: False
      current value: False
      Run tests sequentially in an interactive process. This is necessary, for example, when you add
      breakpoints to your code.

  --[no-]test-force
  PANTS_TEST_FORCE
  force
      default: False
      current value: False
      Force the tests to run, even if they could be satisfied from cache.
...

Related subsystems: coverage-py, download-pex-bin, pants-releases, pex, pex-binary-defaults, pytest, python-infer, python-native-code, python-repos, python-setup, setup-py-generation, setuptools, source, subprocess-environment

Note that when you run ./pants help <goal>, it outputs all related subsystems, such as pytest. You can then run ./pants help pytest to get more information.

You can also run ./pants help goals and ./pants help subsystems to get a list of all activated options scopes.

To get help on the python_tests target:

❯ ./pants help python_test

`python_test` target
--------------------

A single Python test file, written in either Pytest style or unittest style.

All test util code, including `conftest.py`, should go into a dedicated `python_source` target and then be included in the
`dependencies` field. (You can use the `python_test_utils` target to generate these `python_source` targets.)

See https://www.pantsbuild.org/v2.8/docs/python-test-goal

Valid fields:

timeout
    type: int | None
    default: None
    A timeout (in seconds) used by each test file belonging to this target.

    This only applies if the option `--pytest-timeouts` is set to True.

...

Advanced Help

Many options are classified as advanced, meaning they are primarily intended to be used by admins, not by regular users.

Use help-advanced, e.g. ./pants help-advanced global or ./pants help-advanced pytest.