OK, I feel silly for asking because I'm sure it's been solved, but I searched and didn't see... how do you do a python library with eg C extensions? Or worse, cuda? (got some internal libraries which do this, and while we could package them and then use them as third-party extensions, it's not elegant). Do I need to write a plugin of some sort?

Not silly at all. Native extensions are mentioned in the docs here: https://www.pantsbuild.org/v2.8/docs/python-distributions#using-an-existing-setuppy

Ah! I kept seeing how plugins can modify setup.py, but this should do the trick. Thanks!

As @curved-television-6568 mentioned, you write your own

setup.py

to build the native extension, and wrap it in a

python_distribution

. As of today, you'd then have to publish it and consume it as a 3rdparty dep. However this PR https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/pull/12573 will allow

test

,

run

and

repl

to consume it directly from the repo. I hope to land that in the next day or two.