@fresh-cat-90827 Re the JSON schema PR (https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/pull/18177) - while I love the idea of it automatically being exported, it kinda begs the question of whether the help API is the best place for it. The API itself feels kinda clumsy, and moreso a leak that we use help to generate the json schema, so that's why it's run by the help goal?

./pants help json-schema > "pantsbuild-$(./pants version).json"

Now, the only real reason I bring this up is because it ties into my shell completions thing that never really found a home, but fits alongside the schema creation. Uses help to generate a file as a result of processing said help: https://github.com/pantsbuild/pants/issues/16315 This whole thing ran into the problem of

export

not being a great place as of today, because it's mostly for venvs, and bloating the API with a custom

experimental-shell-completion

felt messy, and etc etc I guess the question is, since we'd have 2 items that rely on help to generate some sort of custom output files, is there a better location or a consolidation for this? If we end up as

pants help json-schema

being the play, then I'd also put

pants help completions

in there too

./pants help-export json-schema

./pants help-export completions

That is similar to

./pants help-advanced

Yeah, I still find it a little strange to read

help-export

Buuuuut, it is related to intellisense/auto-complete, so ... you know... "help-ish"

`./pants help-json-schema`and

./pants help-completions

?

./pants export-pants-meta json-schema

./pants export-pants-meta completions

Riffing on

./pants export

I mean, my strong preference is

./pants --completions

or

./pants export completions

- but I'll take anywhere to put it 🙂

something under

export

makes more sense for both json-schema and completions than under

help

.

I'd prefer not to add more goals.

export

could work, but then how do we say "the thing I want exported is completions, not venvs"

So, my original interpretation (just by name, honestly) was that export was used to basically pull non-production-code pants "stuff" out of pants, and into the host filesystem (using "host" super loosely here). We also have an

export-codegen

goal. To me, it seems that the

export

goal is a reasonable place for an overhaul - but I think one of the problems here was that we didn't have access to

help

from the non-builtin goals? Memory is a bit foggy on that part.