Third-Party Dependencies

Pants has special target types to specify dependencies on external third-party code. For example, jar_library targets point to external JAR files specified using Maven-style coordinates, and python_requirements targets point to external Python packages using PyPI names and versions.

It's idiomatic to define these external dependencies in BUILD files under a 3rdparty/ directory. E.g., 3rdparty/jvm/BUILD, 3rdparty/python/BUILD.

Keeping all these definitions in one place makes it easier to avoid transitive dependency conflicts in your codebase.

Note that with this idiom there is no code (source or binary) under 3rdparty. There are only BUILD files that tell Pants which versions of which libraries can be depended on by other code.

• To see how this works in JVM languages, see JVM 3rdparty Pattern
• To see how this works in Python, see Python 3rdparty Pattern