question regarding `experimental_shell_command`s: is it possible to pass in arguments when calling

./pants run

on a shell command? the docs recommend the following template:

experimental_shell_command(
    name="my-script",
    command="./my-script.sh --flag",
    dependencies=[":scripts"],
)

which i can the call with e.g.

./pants run src:my-script

. but the

command

here appears to be static, what if I wanted to pass in a variable?

./pants run src:my-script -- foo

doesn’t seem to work

So the usefulness of that target is to act like a "codegenator" in the larger context of your build (note the "outputs" field). If you just want to run a shell script, there's it's cousin

experimental_run_shell_command

There's also an open request to just

run

a shell_source

ah, i misquoted the docs, I’m actually using the

experimental_run_shell_command

you mentioned. I take it it’s not possible to pass in arbitrary arguments then? just tried

command="./my-script.sh --flag {1}",

and i get an index error when running

./pants run src:my-script -- foo

I'm sure it's possible but I'd have to check the code. However I think the "run a source" feature would make this work and just replace that `run_shell`target

added my +1 to the ticket 🙂 https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/issues/16615

If you're interested in contributing, we're happy to help you along

I am, and I’ve been meaning to get around to contributing on another ticket: https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/issues/15630 once that’s done i’d be more than happy to pick this one up as well 🙂

regardless of “run a source” vs “run a target”, this is known as “passthrough args”:

run

appends the args after

--

to the command that it invokes, so

./pants run $target -- foo

should work without any modification to the target itself. if it doesn’t, it’s a bug in the

shell

run

implementation

seems to be a bug in 2.12 then

afaict, https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/blob/5a04478e210b88e28c644783866891a82b290c78/src/python/pants/backend/shell/shell_command.py#L226 is the prefix that is used, and then the

run

goal will append the args