Do not require full environment name in tox.ini sections

[oakkitten]

It seems that I have to have a full env name in tox.ini sections. That is, If I have an environment my-cool-env and I want to change an environmental variable for it, I could do:

[testenv]
setenv =
    my-cool-env: FOO = bar

Or I could do:

[testenv]
setenv =
    cool: FOO = bar

I could also do:

[testenv:my-cool-env]
setenv =
    FOO = bar

But this won't work:

[testenv:cool]
setenv =
    FOO = bar

Why not? I can't think of any downside in supporting this syntax. It seems it can simplify things a bit.

P.S. The documentation kind of suggests that this syntax is possible?

[gaborbernat]

Why not? I can't think of any downside in supporting this syntax.

This would induce ambiguity. How would you know if cool here is an env on its own or is just part of one? The only place where we support partial names is environment markers in configurations. I'm not sure why you conclude from the linked section that this syntax is possible 🤔

[oakkitten]

It does introduce ambiguity if you have environments my-cool-env and cool, but if you do something like that you will have ambiguity in markers as well. You can always rename cool to be unambiguous, which sounds like a good idea anyway. I think the benefits outweigh the cost.

Among other things, this would allow a nice workaround for #2428, instead of the following, which seems to be the only option unless you want to list all envs,

[testenv:.tox]
install_command = python -m pip install {opts} {packages}

[testenv]
install_command = your_custom_command

I could just write

[testenv:!.tox]
install_command = your_custom_command

I'm not sure why you conclude from the linked section that this syntax is possible 🤔

Was wrong there!

[oakkitten]

I think I completely misunderstood how section names work. Apparently [testenv:foo-{bar,baz}] creates a single new environment foo-{bar,baz}. I thought that this would update environments matching foo-bar and foo-baz. Sorry!