Hi wave Just updated to version 2 29 and have an issue with Pants #general

Hi :wave: . Just updated to version 2.29 and have ...

abundant-tent-27407

11/06/2025, 9:01 AM

Hi 👋 . Just updated to version 2.29 and have an issue with

python_distribution

that I wasn't having prior. I'm getting the following error:

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stderr:
usage: setup.py [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
   or: setup.py --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
   or: setup.py --help-commands
   or: setup.py cmd --help

error: option --python-tag not recognized

Simplified taget:

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python_distribution(
    ...
    wheel_config_settings = {
        "--global-option": [
            "--python-tag",
            "py311",
        ],
    },
)

Any suggestions on what is going on here?

wide-midnight-78598

11/06/2025, 1:15 PM

Did this work in 2.28?

brief-scientist-13682

11/06/2025, 5:25 PM

It should have never worked.

--python-tag

is an option to the

bdist_wheel

subcommand and not a global

setup.py

option. Old school:

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:; touch foo.py
:; pex setuptools -- -c 'from setuptools import setup; setup(name="foo", version="0.1.0")' bdist_wheel --python-tag bar &>/dev/null

:; ls -1 dist/
foo-0.1.0-bar-none-any.whl

~New school:

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:; echo 'from setuptools import setup; setup(name="foo", version="0.1.0")' > setup.py
:; pex build -c pyproject-build -- --config-setting=--build-option=--python-tag=baz . &>/dev/null

:; ls -1 dist/
foo-0.1.0-bar-none-any.whl
foo-0.1.0-baz-none-any.whl
foo-0.1.0.tar.gz

Always should have been bad:

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:; pex build -c pyproject-build -- --config-setting=--global-option=--python-tag=baz . 
* Creating isolated environment: venv+pip...
* Installing packages in isolated environment:
  - setuptools >= 40.8.0
* Getting build dependencies for sdist...
usage: setup.py [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
   or: setup.py --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
   or: setup.py --help-commands
   or: setup.py cmd --help

error: option --python-tag not recognized

ERROR Backend subprocess exited when trying to invoke get_requires_for_build_sdist

brief-scientist-13682

11/06/2025, 5:46 PM

This is only supposed to be an example, and not official, but, FWICT, its the only public mention of setuptools support for

--build-option

(and

--global-option

for that matter) besides reading the

setuptools/build_meta.py

source or casting your fortunes to stack overflow, AI slop, etc: https://peps.python.org/pep-0517/#config-settings The fact that setuptools uses keys named like command line flags (with leading