file

A single loose file that lives outside of code packages.

Files are placed directly in archives, outside of code artifacts such as Python wheels or JVM JARs. The sources of a file target are accessed via filesystem APIs, such as Python's open(), via paths relative to the repository root.

Backend: pants.core

dependencies

type: Iterable[str] | None
default: None

Addresses to other targets that this target depends on, e.g. ['helloworld/subdir:lib', 'helloworld/main.py:lib', '3rdparty:reqs#django'].

This augments any dependencies inferred by Pants, such as by analyzing your imports. Use ./pants dependencies or ./pants peek on this target to get the final result.

See Targets and BUILD files and Targets and BUILD files for more about how addresses are formed, including for generated targets. You can also run ./pants list :: to find all addresses in your project, or ./pants list dir: to find all addresses defined in that directory.

If the target is in the same BUILD file, you can leave off the BUILD file path, e.g. :tgt instead of helloworld/subdir:tgt. For generated first-party addresses, use ./ for the file path, e.g. ./main.py:tgt; for all other generated targets, use :tgt#generated_name.

You may exclude dependencies by prefixing with !, e.g. ['!helloworld/subdir:lib', '!./sibling.txt']. Ignores are intended for false positives with dependency inference; otherwise, simply leave off the dependency from the BUILD file.

description

type: str | None
default: None

A human-readable description of the target.

Use ./pants list --documented :: to see all targets with descriptions.

source

type: str
required

A single file that belongs to this target.

Path is relative to the BUILD file's directory, e.g. source='example.ext'.

tags

type: Iterable[str] | None
default: None

Arbitrary strings to describe a target.

For example, you may tag some test targets with 'integration_test' so that you could run ./pants --tag='integration_test' test :: to only run on targets with that tag.