Outside of the

export

goal, if I want to create a virtualenv with wheels built by pants, but use the versions locked in the pex lockfile, how might I do that? I assume there's something in PEX to do that? I couldn't find anything about lockfiles in the pex docs.

Is this for use in a plugin?

If you 1st strip the damn headers Pants adds to the lockfile, which make it invalid JSON, you can then:

PEX_TOOLS=1 pex --python /use/exactly/this/python --lock the.lock [optional requirements strings to subset the lock; otherwise you get everything] --include-tools -- venv create/it/right/here

Is this for use in a plugin?

Not necessarily. I'm thinking of a couple of different things. • When using the wheels as library (a key thing I want to allow by publishing to pypi), I want the requirements to be very broad. • When installing the wheels together as an application, I want all the requirements to be installed using the precise versions listed in the lockfile. When installing the application in a virtualenv, I can't use: • Export: because I can't specify a path in /opt, it has to be under the workspace directory. • Just install the wheels with pip, because then pip won't use the already locked deps.

Aha. Just make a

pex_binary(... include_tools=True)

target and

pants package

that.

I will try running your sample via PEX. Thank you John

Then run

PEX_TOOLS=1 my.pex venv right/here

Huh. I hadn't considered using a pex_binary. I'll have to play with that

You don't need the second manual step if you only care about a venv but not where it lives.

Yes, for backwards compatibility I have to care about the venv at a particular location.

It will create a venv transparently on 1st run.

Eventually, I hope to remove that assumption about the path.

Again, tack on

--help

after the

venv

tool subcommand to learn the options.

Will do. Thank you!