Hi, (context:) I'm working on optimizing the CI speed and my current bottleneck seems to be building the Python Wheels. In my current setup, I use Pants to build the Wheels and then directly (w/o Pants) run a

docker build

command that copies the wheels and installs them. My question is: can I build Docker images for Python projects with Pants in a way that will skip building the Wheels? (building the Wheels takes around 2.5 minutes)

you could try using pex instead of whl. There's a good post on some strategies for taking advantage of the docker build cache with pex: https://www.pantsbuild.org/blog/2022/08/02/optimizing-python-docker-deploys-using-pants

Will take a look, thanks 🙂