Another bikeshed 🚲 what to call the new symbol we added to BUILD files to get the BUILD directory path. Right now it's

cwd

, but Stu pointed out that's probably a misnomer. So far we have

current_directory

,

build_file_directory

,

current_dir

, and

build_file_dir

proposed

here

? 😂

I'm open to that! Do you think people might be confused if it's

path/to/BUILD

rather than

path/to/

?

I agree with Stu though. Loose thoughts: •

current

might be a bad idea because it's value is relative to the file •

dir

instead of

directory

.

I recommend it be a file function, Stu had the great suggestion of returning

PurePath

so that you can do things like

here() / "../parent_dir"

w/o violating our ban on imports. (Calling

str()

on

PurePath

converts it)

Do you think people might be confused if it's path/to/BUILD rather than path/to/?

Yes if the idea is if it is a dir 😄

K so then how about

build_file_dir

? Hopefully there is zero ambiguity there

__path__  / "../parent_dir"

works just as well. All pathlbi types are immutable, so no concern on that front

path / "../parent_dir" works just as well.

Ack. Another reason I prefer a function is I think it might be more intuitive for non-Python folks like JVM users, and better integrate with the

./pants help build-symbols

I'm itching to make

Is there going to be other build file metadata exposed in the build file in the future?

Perhaps, but I can't imagine what other info we'd want? Kinda related: in v1 we used to have a way to get the absolute path to the build root, although absolute paths don't make much since in v2

For me cwd feels rather natural. The ”current working directory” is all about context to what ”current” is. Here it would be the directory housing the build file you’re looking at.

It made sense to me too. But then I started thinking about your proposal to run Pants in any directory rather than build root, and I think it could become ambiguous

Yeah, well it doesn't have anything todo with execution, which would be the one downside of it.

Is

build_file_dir

okay with you? I figure it removes any ambiguity, and isn't very hard to type either

Yea, it is.