Question on PEX binaries. How do arbitrary file dependencies get included into the Pex binary or sandbox if at all? Context: We have a bit of a nonstandard setup for creating a Pex test runner which involves invoking

pytest.main('./tests')

where it's located under

dir/

from the repo root. I tried to get this to work via

pants run dir:runner-target

but it doesn't work because pytest can't find that directory.

cd dir && pants run :runner-target

also doesn't work. So I included

files(sources=["**"])

as a dependency to the Pex target.

pants dependencies dir/tests_runner.py

shows that all files targets are includes as deps. But running the Pex still doesn't work in any case. So a ran with

--preserve-sandboxes=always

and went inside the sandbox. I see

dir/test_runner.py

instead, but nothing else in the directory.

As hinted at in the docs for pex-files, only python sources and resources are included, so your

files

are silently ignored.

Hmm... that's a bit surprising. I would think the Pex itself might exclude this, but the sandbox should still respect the files passed to it as deps

see https://www.pantsbuild.org/docs/assets#when-to-use-each-asset-target-type for more on the files vs resources in pants.

But what if you just need an asset like an SVG file?

if you want it bundled up in the built pex, you’ll need a

resource

target for it.

It doesn't seem to work. Inside the sandbox it still looks like this even with

resources(name="test_files", sources=["**"])

❯ tree
.
├── __run.sh
├── dir
│   ├── __pycache__
│   │   └── tests_runner.cpython-311.pyc
│   └── tests_runner.py
├── root.pex
│   ├── PEX-INFO
│   ├── __main__.py
│   └── __pex__
│       └── __init__.py
├── root.pex_bin_python_shim.sh
└── root.pex_pex_shim.sh