How would people feel about the new "asset inference" feature for Python being on-by-default? I think given that source inference (new name I suppose?) is on by default and the likelihood of false positives is extremely low (and likely has mild side effects if it happens) that we should have it on by default. Thoughts 🎣 ?

Hmmmm

Our deprecation policy says that technically we should: 1. Deprecate not setting this option by default, i.e. prompt users to make a decision in Pants 2.11 2. in Pants 2.12, we can change the default to be on Downside is that it causes some churn for 2.11 users

Can we only force people to set the option if we detect a Python target depending on an asset target?

I don't think so because that means that we have to enable asset inference enough to do that, which has a performance impact.

Sorry, detect in a BUILD file

Joshua has pointed out that the ideal default would be

[python-infer].assets

should be True. I think that makes sense, and I definitely want to keep having Pants have the right defaults so that you don't have to turn on some magical options to get things working properly So imo the question is do we "fix the default" via a deprecation or can we do it right way

The obvious stumbling blocks: • False positives • Ambiguity warnings • performance hit

Ambiguity errors

Which are really just useful-but-annoying(?) warnings; not errors

(edited)

The obvious stumbling blocks:

I would add: performance hit. Particulary until we have https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/issues/14720

+1 on deprecation cycle to avoid surprises.