It feels silly that referencing an environment variable in my pants.toml file that isn't set will prevent pants from being able to generate help messages for things like

pants generate-lockfiles --help

. I have this in my pants.toml:

[python-repos]
indexes.add = ["<https://aws>:%(env.CODEARTIFACT_AUTH_TOKEN)s@etx-744645366470.d.codeartifact.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/pypi/etx-pypi2/simple/"]

and if CODEARTIFACT_AUTH_TOKEN isn't set pants can't even print the entry help menu from

pants --help

I understand the frustration. One potential improvement might be to use https://www.pantsbuild.org/2.20/docs/using-pants/key-concepts/options#pantsbootstrap-file to optionally set the variable to a dummy value

And as always a PR that fixes anything silly to be less silly is welcome.