Hi all, I was wondering if pants had a proper clear-all function to clean out all cached files? I saw that it was supported for older versions, but not the new versions of pants?

hey! so far, we haven’t had requests for a goal to wipe the caches, except to manage disk usage: see this FAQ entry: https://www.pantsbuild.org/docs/troubleshooting#cache-or-pantsd-invalidation-issues

Hmmm I see. That’s a bummer, because I’ve run into a few cases where clearing out a bunch of folders has solved a bunch of problems. I now just have an alias that does this:

rm -rf ~/.cache/pants ~/.pex dist .pids .pants.d

well, see the “Troubleshooting” entry i linked: we’d like to fix those issues, and your case is fairly rare

Ah I see, gotcha

you are the first person in the last three months to have asked for it (…our Slack history doesn’t go further back), heh… i hope that we’re actually not just scaring folks out of reporting bugs, but yes: our goal is to fix them

Ha! That’s amazing, I figured it would be something that people would’ve asked more of but I guess not! Interesting. Maybe I’m just doing things I shouldn’t be doing with pants…I promise I’ve been following the docs! 🙂

there is one reported issue with the

.pex

directory now, so i’m curious what your issue is

If I ever run into one again I will let you know! @witty-crayon-22786

thank you!

Actually, I’ve got one to report. In a this Discussion, I’m describing an issue I’m having. At the end there is a reproduction repo. For the issue to be reproduced consistently, I’m running

rm -rf .pids

before

pants package ::

. I was actually thinking about whether or not I should report it and this made me decide to do that. Should I open an “Issue” on GH? Also, I’d you’d like to get that reported, you’d might want to put up a section for cache-invalidation in the docs and in the CLI’s help as a click-bait. The user will expect it to have docs on how to invalidate and what it does and instead will find a request to file a report for their use-case for it to be fixed.

An issue would be great!

Also, I’d you’d like to get that reported, you’d might want to put up a section for cache-invalidation in the docs and in the CLI’s help as a click-bait. The user will expect it to have docs on how to invalidate and what it does and instead will find a request to file a report for their use-case for it to be fixed.

ah, yea: something on the CLI would be good. you will get a prompt to file an issue when an exception happens, but not sure what other cases to trigger it in. as it stands, this item is the primary documentation on that: https://www.pantsbuild.org/docs/troubleshooting#cache-or-pantsd-invalidation-issues

Late to the party, but I’ll chime in here that I someone ended up in a state where I was getting

Exception: Could not identify a process to backtrack to for: Missing digest

Clearing out all the caches seems to have fixed it

@straight-action-80318: mm, thanks for the report. in future, please try to follow the instructions at https://www.pantsbuild.org/docs/troubleshooting#cache-or-pantsd-invalidation-issues : it will help to determine what kind of bug we’re dealing with, and will guide you through filing an issue