In bazel land if I have these targets

//path/to/thing:thing
//path/to/thing:thing_helper

bazel run //path/to/thing

works. As far as I can tell, pants works this way to.. if the target name matches the directory name it defaults. Though, if you have more than one target in a BUILD file I am seeing this exception

TooManyTargetsException: The `run` goal only works with one valid target, but was given multiple valid targets:

  * third_party/balena:balena
  * third_party/balena:login

So question: Can I tell pants to do what I want? default to balena:balena if multiple targets?

You left out the command line you used to get that error.

Sorry

pants run third_party/balena -- --version
16:18:50.12 [ERROR] 1 Exception encountered:

Engine traceback:
  in `run` goal

TooManyTargetsException: The `run` goal only works with one valid target, but was given multiple valid targets:

  * third_party/balena:balena
  * third_party/balena:login

Please select one of these targets to run.

Hrm, that looks like a bug to me.

pants run third_party/balena:balena -- -version

works as expected.

A trailing

:

is supposed to be required to glob, which should lead to your error. No trailing

:

should not be globbing, it should expand to your working CLI internally... or else the default target concept means nothing.

I think pants switched from

foo/bar

=

foo/bar:bar

to

foo/bar

=

foo/bar:

in 2.13 (https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/pull/15589 / https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/issues/14209).

Not sure if it matters.. if I remove the login target

third_party/balena

does the right thing.

I imagine that'll be the glob expanding to one target, instead of expanding to two

I see..

Hrm. Ok. Yeah - Pants is very thrashy! TIL.