This might be a bit confusing at first, so open this thread with questions if you have them 🙂 Pants flags are currently scoped. That means that, for instance, a flag

--myflag

that is registered by task

zinc

in goal

compile

will be used as

./pants --compile-zinc-myflag=<something> <goal> <target(s)>

. However, sometimes it’s not very comfortable to write those long flags. Another way to specify “I want this flag to apply to the

zinc

task inside the

compile

goal” is to use the syntax that you mentioned `./pants compile.zinc --myflag=<value> <target(s)>. This is explained in the docs around the third and fourth code blocks in section “*How to Use Shorthand Flags*“.