Pants Has Got Your Python Monorepo Covered

Summary

In a software project writing code is just one step of the overall lifecycle. There are many repetitive steps such as linting, running tests, and packaging that need to be run for each project that you maintain. In order to reduce the overhead of these repeat tasks, and to simplify the process of integrating code across multiple systems the use of monorepos has been growing in popularity. The Pants build tool is purpose built for addressing all of the drudgery and for working with monorepos of all sizes. In this episode core maintainers Eric Arellano and Stu Hood explain how the Pants project works, the benefits of automatic dependency inference, and how you can start using it in your own projects today. They also share useful tips for how to organize your projects, and how the plugin oriented architecture adds flexibility for you to customize Pants to your specific needs.

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• Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Eric Arellano and Stu Hood about Pants, a flexible build system that works well with monorepos.

Interview

• Introductions
• How did you get introduced to Python?
• Can you start by describing what Pants is and how it got started?
  • What’s the story behind the name?
• What is a monorepo and why might I want one?
  • What are the challenges caused by working with a monorepo?
  • Why are monorepos so uncommon in Python projects?
• What is the workflow for a developer or team who is managing a project with Pants?
• How does Pants integrate with the broader ecosystem of Python tools for dependency management and packaging (e.g. Poetry, Pip, pip-tools, Flit, Twine, Pex, Shiv, etc.)?
• What is involved in setting up Pants for working with a new Python project?
  • What complications might developers encounter when trying to implement Pants in an existing project?
• How is Pants itself implemented?
  • How have the design, goals, or architecture evolved since Pants was first created?
  • What are the major changes in the v2 release?
    • What was the motivation for the major overhaul of the project?
• How do you recommend developers lay out their projects to work well with Python?
• How can I handle code shared between different modules or packages, and reducing the third party dependencies that are built into the respective packages?
• What are some of the most interesting, unexpected, or innovative ways that you have seen Pants used?
• What have you found to be the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging aspects of working on Pants?
• What are the cases where Pants is the wrong choice?
• What do you have planned for the future of the pants project?

Keep In Touch

• Eric
  • LinkedIn
  • Eric-Arellano on GitHub
  • @EArellanoAZ on Twitter
• Stu
  • stuhood on GitHub
  • @stuhood on Twitter
  • LinkedIn

Picks

• Tobias
  • Cursed TV show
• Eric
  • Turtle Graphics
• Stu
  • Faster Than Lime blog

Links

• Pants
• Foursquare
• Twitter
• Toolchain
• Bazel build tool
• Ant build tool
• Monorepo
• isort
• Tox
• Poetry
• distutils
• setuptools
• mypy
• Bandit
• Flake8
• Sample Python Pants Project
• gRPC
• Protocol Buffers
• Rust
• GIL == Global Interpreter Lock
• PEP 420
• Blog post about using Pants to migrate from Python 2 to 3
• Pex
• Shiv
• PyOxidizer

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA