sousa-gecko/python/mach/docs/settings.md

(mach-settings)=

Settings

Mach can read settings in from a set of configuration files. These configuration files are either named machrc or .machrc and are specified by the bootstrap script. In mozilla-central, these files can live in ~/.mozbuild and/or topsrcdir.

Settings can be specified anywhere, and used both by mach core or individual commands.

Core Settings

These settings are implemented by mach core.

• alias - Create a command alias. This is useful if you want to alias a command to something else, optionally including some defaults. It can either be used to create an entire new command, or provide defaults for an existing one. For example:

.. parsed-literal::

    [alias]
    mochitest = mochitest -f browser
    browser-test = mochitest -f browser

Defining Settings

Settings need to be explicitly defined, along with their type, otherwise mach will throw when trying to access them.

To define settings, use the {func}~decorators.SettingsProvider decorator in an existing mach command module. E.g:

from mach.decorators import SettingsProvider
from mozbuild.base import MachCommandBase

@SettingsProvider
class ArbitraryClassName(MachCommandBase):
    config_settings = [
        ('foo.bar', 'string', "A helpful description"),
        ('foo.baz', 'int', "Another description", 0, {'choices': set([0,1,2])}),
    ]

@SettingsProvider's must specify a variable called config_settings that returns a list of tuples. Alternatively, it can specify a function called config_settings that returns a list of tuples.

Each tuple is of the form:

('<section>.<option>', '<type>', '<description>', default, extra)

type is a string and can be one of: string, boolean, int, pos_int, path

description is a string explaining how to define the settings and where they get used. Descriptions should ideally be multi-line paragraphs where the first line acts as a short description.

default is optional, and provides a default value in case none was specified by any of the configuration files.

extra is also optional and is a dict containing additional key/value pairs to add to the setting's metadata. The following keys may be specified in the extra dict:

• choices - A set of allowed values for the setting. May also be a callable returning an iterable of allowed values, useful when the set of valid values isn't known until runtime.

Wildcards

Sometimes a section should allow arbitrarily defined options from the user, such as the alias section mentioned above. To define a section like this, use * as the option name. For example:

.. parsed-literal::

    ('foo.*', 'string', 'desc')

This allows configuration files like this:

.. parsed-literal::

    [foo]
    arbitrary1 = some string
    arbitrary2 = some other string

Finding Settings

You can see which settings are available as well as their description and expected values by running:

.. parsed-literal::

    ./mach settings  # or
    ./mach settings --list

Accessing Settings

Now that the settings are defined and documented, they're accessible from individual mach commands from the mach command context. For example:

from mach.decorators import (
    Command,
    SettingsProvider,
)
from mozbuild.base import MachCommandBase

@SettingsProvider
class ExampleSettings(object):
    config_settings = [
        ('a.b', 'string', 'desc', 'default'),
        ('foo.bar', 'string', 'desc',),
        ('foo.baz', 'int', 'desc', 0, {'choices': set([0,1,2])}),
    ]

@Command('command', category='misc',
         description='Prints a setting')
def command(command_context):
    settings = command_context._mach_context.settings
    print(settings.a.b)
    for option in settings.foo:
        print(settings.foo[option])