I'm using 2.13 and seeing weird behavior in

.cache/pants/setup

. https://www.pantsbuild.org/docs/using-pants-in-ci recommends a simple script for nuking cache directories when too large. It recommends

pants/setup

as one of the directories to monitor. When we do that for our builds when they kick off, we start seeing errors like this

/home/buildbot/.cache/pants/setup/bootstrap-Linux-x86_64/2.13.0_py38/bin/python: No such file or directory

Any recommendations on what to do?

No recommendations beyond standard investigative techniques. I see this structure:

$ ls -l ~/.cache/pants/setup/bootstrap-Linux-x86_64/
total 24
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jsirois jsirois   76 Sep 19 19:32 2.12.0_py39 -> /home/jsirois/.cache/pants/setup/bootstrap-Linux-x86_64/pants.UJYLSt/install
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jsirois jsirois   76 Sep 26 10:16 2.13.0_py39 -> /home/jsirois/.cache/pants/setup/bootstrap-Linux-x86_64/pants.1tUIeV/install
drwx------ 3 jsirois jsirois 4096 Sep 26 10:16 pants.1tUIeV
drwx------ 3 jsirois jsirois 4096 Sep 19 19:32 pants.UJYLSt
drwxr-xr-x 2 jsirois jsirois 4096 Sep 19 19:32 pex-2.1.62
drwxr-xr-x 2 jsirois jsirois 4096 Sep 19 19:32 virtualenv-20.4.7

So,

<Pants version>_py<Python version> -> <tmpdir>/install

If your nuking is partial, i.e. symlinks aren't nuked, the error you describe could happen. Further, picking one of those Pants installs:

$ ls -l ~/.cache/pants/setup/bootstrap-Linux-x86_64/2.13.0_py39/bin/ | grep python
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jsirois jsirois   50 Sep 26 10:16 python -> /home/jsirois/.pyenv/versions/3.9.14/bin/python3.9
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jsirois jsirois    6 Sep 26 10:16 python3 -> python
lrwxrwxrwx 1 jsirois jsirois    6 Sep 26 10:16 python3.9 -> python

Here the

python -> <underlying Python venv was created from>

. If the underlying Python goes away, again you could see the error you posted.