Is there a way to get files into a test execution directory without the test target depending on those files targets? Is there a way to say something like "just include these targets in with this target for this test run?" Idk if what I'm asking makes senes

Perhaps start with why you don't want the test target to depend on the files and yet have access to them in the test sandbox - which is surely a form of dependency. What issue are you trying to work around?

Oh it is a form of dependency... but I just don't particularly want changes from the files mentioned to trigger these tests. I'm trying to work around the fact that i didn't write these tests, and they don't work in a Pants sandbox because they expect to be run from a specific location, and I'm trying to hack them into Pants as a PoC for a colleague

What’s an example of such files? I think we’d be pretty leery of files in the sandbox that don’t invalidate the cache.

Yeah I’m walking this back… the test depends on them. I was trying to hack something together that didn’t make sense