Hi, using pants with python. For

python_sources

https://www.pantsbuild.org/docs/reference-python_sources In the docs under

dependencies

it says:

This augments any dependencies inferred by Pants, such as by analyzing your imports

Is there a way to disable the automatic import analysis and just use the manual list? I want to be explicit about the dependencies that’s all.

[python-infer]
imports = false

https://www.pantsbuild.org/docs/reference-python-infer

Thank you!

Hi! It is totally valid to not use dependency inference, although we generally strongly encourage using it for three reasons 1) Dependency inference tends to be far more precise, as it infers at the file level. To get the same precision, you should ban using

python_sources

(plural) and only use

python_source

targets. But that's a disaster to maintain. The precision gives you much finer-grained caching and better project introspection, like

--changed-since

2) Dependency inference tends to be more accurate. W/ explicit deps, it's easy to forget to remove deps from BUILD files. It's also sometimes possible to leave off a real dep because a transitive dependency includes it 3) Manual BUILD file management is a pain, and engineers often get frustrated What's your thinking around wanting to be explicit?

Sometimes people want to be explicit in order to enforce dependency rules at code review time. One of our most upvoted open tickets is to provide that enforcement automatically, so you can get the best of both worlds. @billions-keyboard-33102 is that relevant to your use-case? Or do you prefer explicit deps for some other reason?

Hi, so I was using the dependency inference, and it works great - possibly might even revert to that. Reason for being explicit is for high-level dependency of subsystems. In a pants mono-repo you can import anything from anywhere, but this could harm future development if you create a dependency unnecessarily. Say the repo consists of 3 high-level subsystems

subsystem1

,

subsystem2

,

subsystem3

. I have a map in my head that

subsystem1

depends on

subsystem2

, but not

subsystem3

. Another example, I would also consider it strange if some authorisation code imported a testing library. Explicit dependencies seemed a nice way of enforcing these things. EDIT: yes the ticket you linked describes this better!

Aha!

Sure, thank you - I’ll take a look