Questions on pdm lock command

[sr-murthy]

Hi.

I have a question and a suggestion on the pdm lock command. I'm using PDM version 2.12.4 in a Python 3.11.2 virtual env.

Can someone please tell me the impact of --no-isolation for pdm lock? As I understand it --no-isolation is only relevant for build-related commands, or commands where artifacts are built, but pdm lock doesn't build anything. A separate point on this - some documentation on what build isolation is, and the commands for which it is relevant, could be useful.

If I simply wish to update my (default) lockfile, which I generated originally from my project TOML and contains all my development dependencies, because of changes in my TOML, e.g. adding a new dev. dependency group, do I need to specify --no-isolation?

In the case of adding a new dev. dependency group in my TOML I ran:

$ pdm lock -v --no-isolation --dev --strategy "cross_platform"

This ran fine, and updated the lockfile with the new group I added. But if I run this without --no-isolation for the same set of changes in the TOML:

pdm lock -v --dev --strategy "cross_platform"

I see no difference in the changes to the lockfile. My guess is that --no-isolation has no impact on the output of pdm lock, but perhaps @frostming can correct me. If not, then I guess it could be removed. [?]

My second point relates to the CLI description of the locking strategy option (--strategy / -S) - ATM this doesn't indicate what the default strategy is, but for clarity I think it should be. I assumed it was "cross_platform" but I had to look this up in the documentation. The help text for this command currently:

Specify lock strategy (cross_platform, static_urls, direct_minimal_versions, inherit_metadata). Add
                        'no_' prefix to disable. Can be supplied multiple times or split by comma.

An indication of the default strategy would be useful, and I think the same applies to any other command that has a strategy option where one of multiple strategies can be chosen.