## Summary
Fixes https://github.com/astral-sh/ty/issues/640. If a user passes
`--python=<some-virtual-environment>/bin/python`, we must avoid
canonicalizing the path until we've traversed upwards to find the
`sys.prefix` directory (`<some-virtual-environment>`). On Unix systems,
`<sys.prefix>/bin/python` is often a symlink to a system interpreter; if
we resolve the symlink too easily then we'll add the system
interpreter's `site-packages` directory as a search path rather than the
virtual environment's directory.
## Test Plan
I added an integration test to
`crates/ty/tests/cli/python_environment.rs` which fails on `main`. I
also manually tested locally that running `cargo run -p ty check foo.py
--python=.venv/bin/python -vv` now prints this log to the terminal
```
2025-06-20 18:35:24.57702 DEBUG Resolved site-packages directories for this virtual environment are: SitePackagesPaths({"/Users/alexw/dev/ruff/.venv/lib/python3.13/site-packages"})
```
Whereas it previously resolved `site-packages` to my system
intallation's `site-packages` directory
## Summary
Fixes https://github.com/astral-sh/ty/issues/556.
On Windows, system installations have different layouts to virtual
environments. In Windows virtual environments, the Python executable is
found at `<sys.prefix>/Scripts/python.exe`. But in Windows system
installations, the Python executable is found at
`<sys.prefix>/python.exe`. That means that Windows users were able to
point to Python executables inside virtual environments with the
`--python` flag, but they weren't able to point to Python executables
inside system installations.
This PR fixes that issue. It also makes a couple of other changes:
- Nearly all `sys.prefix` resolution is moved inside `site_packages.rs`.
That was the original design of the `site-packages` resolution logic,
but features implemented since the initial implementation have added
some resolution and validation to `resolver.rs` inside the module
resolver. That means that we've ended up with a somewhat confusing code
structure and a situation where several checks are unnecessarily
duplicated between the two modules.
- I noticed that we had quite bad error messages if you e.g. pointed to
a path that didn't exist on disk with `--python` (we just gave a
somewhat impenetrable message saying that we "failed to canonicalize"
the path). I improved the error messages here and added CLI tests for
`--python` and the `environment.python` configuration setting.
## Test Plan
- Existing tests pass
- Added new CLI tests
- I manually checked that virtual-environment discovery still works if
no configuration is given
- Micha did some manual testing to check that pointing `--python` to a
system-installation executable now works on Windows
## Summary
- Convert tests demonstrating our resilience to malformed/absent
`version` fields in `pyvenf.cfg` files to mdtests. Also make them more
expansive.
- Convert the regression test I added in
https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff/pull/18157 to an mdtest
- Add comments next to unit tests that cannot be converted to mdtests
(but where it's not obvious why they can't) so I don't have to do this
exercise again 😄
- In `site_packages.rs`, factor out the logic for figuring out where we
expect the system-installation `site-packages` to be. Currently we have
the same logic twice.
## Test Plan
`cargo test -p ty_python_semantic`
Follow-up to https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff/pull/17991 ensuring we do
not allow detection of system environments when the origin is
`VIRTUAL_ENV` or a discovered `.venv` directory — i.e., those always
require a `pyvenv.cfg` file.
Adds test coverage for https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff/pull/17991,
which includes some minor refactoring of the virtual environment test
infrastructure.
I tried to minimize stylistic changes, but there are still a few because
I was a little confused by the setup. I could see this evolving more in
the future, as I don't think the existing model can capture all the test
coverage I'm looking for.
This adds basic support for non-virtual Python environments by accepting
a directory without a `pyvenv.cfg` which allows existing, subsequent
site-packages discovery logic to succeed. We can do better here in the
long-term, by adding more eager validation (for error messages) and
parsing the Python version from the discovered site-packages directory
(which isn't relevant yet, because we don't use the discovered Python
version from virtual environments as the default `--python-version` yet
either).
Related
- https://github.com/astral-sh/ty/issues/265
- https://github.com/astral-sh/ty/issues/193
You can review this commit by commit if it makes you happy.
I tested this manually; I think refactoring the test setup is going to
be a bit more invasive so I'll stack it on top (see
https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff/pull/17996).
```
❯ uv run ty check --python /Users/zb/.local/share/uv/python/cpython-3.10.17-macos-aarch64-none/ -vv example
2025-05-09 12:06:33.685911 DEBUG Version: 0.0.0-alpha.7 (f9c4c8999 2025-05-08)
2025-05-09 12:06:33.685987 DEBUG Architecture: aarch64, OS: macos, case-sensitive: case-insensitive
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686002 DEBUG Searching for a project in '/Users/zb/workspace/ty'
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686123 DEBUG Resolving requires-python constraint: `>=3.8`
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686129 DEBUG Resolved requires-python constraint to: 3.8
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686142 DEBUG Project without `tool.ty` section: '/Users/zb/workspace/ty'
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686147 DEBUG Searching for a user-level configuration at `/Users/zb/.config/ty/ty.toml`
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686156 INFO Defaulting to python-platform `darwin`
2025-05-09 12:06:33.68636 INFO Python version: Python 3.8, platform: darwin
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686375 DEBUG Adding first-party search path '/Users/zb/workspace/ty'
2025-05-09 12:06:33.68638 DEBUG Using vendored stdlib
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686634 DEBUG Discovering site-packages paths from sys-prefix `/Users/zb/.local/share/uv/python/cpython-3.10.17-macos-aarch64-none` (`--python` argument')
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686667 DEBUG Attempting to parse virtual environment metadata at '/Users/zb/.local/share/uv/python/cpython-3.10.17-macos-aarch64-none/pyvenv.cfg'
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686671 DEBUG Searching for site-packages directory in `sys.prefix` path `/Users/zb/.local/share/uv/python/cpython-3.10.17-macos-aarch64-none`
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686702 DEBUG Resolved site-packages directories for this environment are: ["/Users/zb/.local/share/uv/python/cpython-3.10.17-macos-aarch64-none/lib/python3.10/site-packages"]
2025-05-09 12:06:33.686706 DEBUG Adding site-packages search path '/Users/zb/.local/share/uv/python/cpython-3.10.17-macos-aarch64-none/lib/python3.10/site-packages'
...
❯ uv run ty check --python /tmp -vv example
2025-05-09 15:36:10.819416 DEBUG Version: 0.0.0-alpha.7 (f9c4c8999 2025-05-08)
2025-05-09 15:36:10.819708 DEBUG Architecture: aarch64, OS: macos, case-sensitive: case-insensitive
2025-05-09 15:36:10.820118 DEBUG Searching for a project in '/Users/zb/workspace/ty'
2025-05-09 15:36:10.821652 DEBUG Resolving requires-python constraint: `>=3.8`
2025-05-09 15:36:10.821667 DEBUG Resolved requires-python constraint to: 3.8
2025-05-09 15:36:10.8217 DEBUG Project without `tool.ty` section: '/Users/zb/workspace/ty'
2025-05-09 15:36:10.821888 DEBUG Searching for a user-level configuration at `/Users/zb/.config/ty/ty.toml`
2025-05-09 15:36:10.822072 INFO Defaulting to python-platform `darwin`
2025-05-09 15:36:10.822439 INFO Python version: Python 3.8, platform: darwin
2025-05-09 15:36:10.822773 DEBUG Adding first-party search path '/Users/zb/workspace/ty'
2025-05-09 15:36:10.822929 DEBUG Using vendored stdlib
2025-05-09 15:36:10.829872 DEBUG Discovering site-packages paths from sys-prefix `/tmp` (`--python` argument')
2025-05-09 15:36:10.829911 DEBUG Attempting to parse virtual environment metadata at '/private/tmp/pyvenv.cfg'
2025-05-09 15:36:10.829917 DEBUG Searching for site-packages directory in `sys.prefix` path `/private/tmp`
ty failed
Cause: Invalid search path settings
Cause: Failed to discover the site-packages directory: Failed to search the `lib` directory of the Python installation at `sys.prefix` path `/private/tmp` for `site-packages`
```
Micha Reiser
Alex Waygood
Zanie Blue
lipefree
Ramil Aleskerov
Matthew Mckee