is there an easy way to make that happen?

Perhaps the easiest is to call the plugin API

rules()

functions:

$ find . -name "register.py" | xargs grep "def rules()"
./src/python/pants/rules/core/register.py:def rules():
./src/python/pants/backend/native/register.py:def rules():
./src/python/pants/backend/project_info/register.py:def rules():
./src/python/pants/backend/python/register.py:def rules():
./pants-plugins/src/python/internal_backend/rules_for_testing/register.py:def rules():

@hundreds-breakfast-49010: that would essentially be an integration test... are you sure you want that?

@witty-crayon-22786 nope, I worked around it

cool

@hundreds-breakfast-49010 i would like it to be feasible to use

def rules()

from individual `register.py`s for this purpose as @enough-analyst-54434 describes -- if that is more annoying than it needs to be, let's consider how those could be rearranged to make them more useful imho!

@aloof-angle-91616 the context for this was this test: https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/pull/8561/commits/5b74c1eba1bc3e4d15855fb760505fdc783be210

ah amazing!

I'm not sure how much effort I would've had to put into making a self-consistent rule graph if I had gone with john's suggestion

hopefully we can eventually make it consistent

yeah for this specific test using mock rules works, but your point is still valid

in my head this is an open problem to be resolved eventually