I have been following the tool lockfile removal - exciting stuff. I have worked on adjusting the behavior of

export

, so simplifying all the code is a boon. I did not, however, have the full context for the extent of the change. So, trying to understand the plan (I’m looking forward to all of this!):

The difference is when you want a custom one, you point it to some named resolve, rather than this special mechanism just for tools.

The drawback for the user is that to create a custom tool lockfile they now also need a requirements.txt (or to add the tool to an existing one) where previously they just made a change in pants.toml. But it was always weird to define requirements in pants.toml instead of in targets, I think.

So, does this mean that, taking

pylint

for example (with appropriate deprecation cycles): • Remove options

[pylint].version

,

[pylint].extra_requirements

,

[pylint].lockfile

• Replace those options with

[pylint].resolve

which references a resolve from

[python].resolves

• Users can now use

pylint

as a resolve name, as it is no longer reserved for the

pylint

tool lockfile • Some kind of error checking that ensures

pylint

is present in the chosen resolve Is that the planned UX?