Upgrading to tox v4

Version 4 is mostly backwards compatible. This document covers all breaking changes and, where applicable, includes guidance on how to update.

See also the list of new features in the FAQ.

Python support

  • tox now requires Python 3.7 or later and is tested only against CPython. You can still create test environments for earlier Python versions or different Python interpreters. PyPy support is best effort, meaning we do not test it as part of our CI runs, however if you discover issues under PyPy we will accept PRs addressing it.

Changed INI rules

  • The hash sign (#) now always acts as comment within tox.ini or setup.cfg tox configuration file. Where you need to pass on a # character you will need to escape it in form of \# so tox does not handle everything right of the # character as a comment. Valid in tox 3:

    # valid in tox 3
    commands = bash -c "echo 'foo#bar'"
    
    # valid in tox 4
    commands = bash -c "echo 'foo\#bar'"
    
  • Within the pass_env you can no longer use space as value separator, instead you need to use the , or the newline character. This is to have the same value separation rules for all tox configuration lines.

    # valid in tox 3
    passenv = ALPHA BETA
    passenv =
        ALPHA
        BETA
    
    # valid in tox 4
    passenv = ALPHA, BETA
    passenv =
        ALPHA
        BETA
    
  • tox 4 now errors when using the -U flag when defining dependencies, e.g. deps = -Ur requirements.txt. While this worked in tox 3, it was never supported officially. Additionally, in the context of a new virtual environment this flag makes no sense anyway.

  • tox 4 requires the install_command to evaluate to a non-empty value for each target environment. In tox 3, an empty value would be substituted for the default install command.

Known regressions

  • On Windows, the tty trait of the caller environment is no longer passed through. The most notable impact of this change is that some tools no longer show colored output. You may need to force colorization to be for such enabled for such tools. See #2337 for more details.

New plugin system

tox 4 is a grounds up rewrite of the code base, and while we kept the configuration layer compatibility no such effort has been made for the programmatic API. Therefore, all plugins will need to redo their integration against the new code base. If you’re a plugin developer refer to the plugin documentation for more information.

Removed tox.ini keys

Configuration key

Migration path

indexserver

See Using a custom PyPI server.

whitelist_externals

Use allowlist_externals key instead.

isolated_build

Isolated builds are now always used.

distdir

Use the TOX_PACKAGE environment variable.

basepython not resolved

The base python configuration is no longer resolved to pythonx.y format, instead is kept as py39, and is the virtualenv project that handles mapping that to a Python interpreter. If you were using this variable we recommend moving to the newly added py_impl and py_dot_ver variables, for example:

deps = -r{py_impl}{py_dot_ver}-req.txt

Failure when all environments are skipped

A run that results in all environments being skipped will no longer result in success. Instead, a failure will be reported. For example, consider a host that does not support Python 3.5:

tox run --skip-missing-interpreters=true -e py35

This will now result in a failure.

Substitutions removed

  • The distshare and homedir substitutions have been removed.

Disallowed env names

  • Environment names that contain multiple Python variants, such as name-py39-pypy or py39-py310 will now raise an error, previously this only warned, you can use ignore_basepython_conflict to disable this error, but we recommend changing the name to avoid this name that can be confusing.

CLI arguments changed

  • The --parallel--safe-build CLI argument has been removed, no longer needed.

  • When you want to pass an option to a test command, e.g. to pytest, now you must use -- as a separator, this worked with version 3 also, but any unknown trailing arguments were automatically passed through, while now this is no longer the case.

  • Running --showconfig or --help-ini with the -v flag will add interleaved debugging information, whereas tox 3 added additional lines at the start. If you want to generate valid ini files you must not use the -v flag.

  • The --index-url is now removed, use PIP_INDEX_URL in set_env instead.

Output changes

  • We now use colors for reporting, to help make the output easier to read for humans. This can be disabled via the TERM=dumb or NO_COLOR=1 environment variables, or the --colored no CLI argument.

Reuse of environments

  • It is no longer possible to reuse environments. While this might have been possible with tox version 3, this behavior was never supported, and possibly caused wrong results as illustrated in the following example.

[testenv]
envdir = .tox/venv

[testenv:a]
deps = pytest>7

[testenv:b]
deps = pytest<7

CLI command compatibility

tox 4 introduced dedicated subcommands for various usages. However, when no subcommand is given the legacy entry point which imitates tox 3 is used.

This compatibility feature makes most tox 3 commands work in tox 4, but there are some exceptions.

Updating usage with -e

In tox 3, environments could be specified to run with the -e flag. In tox 4, environments should always be specified using the -e flag to the run subcommand.

Rewrite usages as follows

# tox 3
tox -e py310,style

# tox 4
tox run -e py310,style

# or, tox 4 with the short alias
tox r -e py310,style

Environment names matching commands

Now that tox has subcommands, it is possible for arguments to tox or its options to match those subcommand names. When that happens, parsing can become ambiguous between the tox 4 usage and the legacy fallback behavior.

For example, consider the following tox config:

[tox]
env_list = py39,py310

[testenv]
commands =
    python -c 'print("hi")'

[testenv:list]
commands =
    python -c 'print("a, b, c")'

This defines an environment whose name matches a tox 4 command, list.

Under tox 3, tox -e list specified the list environment. However, under tox 4, the parse of this usage as an invocation of tox list takes precedence over the legacy behavior.

Therefore, attempting that same usage results in an error:

$ tox -e list
...
tox: error: unrecognized arguments: -e

This is best avoided by updating to non-legacy usage:

$ tox run -e list

# or, equivalently...
$ tox r -e list

Packaging environments

Isolated environment on by default

tox now always uses an isolated build environment when building your projects package. The previous flag to enable this called isolated_build has been removed.

Packaging configuration and inheritance

Isolated build environments are tox environments themselves and may be configured on their own. Their name is defined as follows:

  • For source distributions this environment will match a virtual environment with the same python interpreter as tox is using. The name of this environment will by default .pkg (can be changed via package_env config on a per test environment basis).

  • For wheels (including editable wheels as defined by PEP 660) their name will be .pkg-<impl><python_version>, so for example if you’re building a wheel for a Python 3.10 environment the packaging environment will be .pkg-cpython311 (can be changed via wheel_build_env config on a per test environment basis).

To change a packaging environments settings you can use:

[testenv:.pkg]
pass_env =
    PKG_CONFIG
    PKG_CONFIG_PATH
    PKG_CONFIG_SYSROOT_DIR

[testenv:.pkg-cpython311]
pass_env =
    PKG_CONFIG
    PKG_CONFIG_PATH
    PKG_CONFIG_SYSROOT_DIR

Packaging environments no longer inherit their settings from the testenv section, as this caused issues when some test environment settings conflicted with packaging setting. However starting with tox>=4.2 all packaging environments inherit from the pkgenv section, allowing you to define packaging common packaging settings in one central place, while still allowing you to override it when needed on a per package environment basis:

[pkgenv]
pass_env =
    PKG_CONFIG
    PKG_CONFIG_PATH
    PKG_CONFIG_SYSROOT_DIR

[testenv:.pkg-cpython311]
pass_env =
    {[pkgenv]pass_env}
    IS_311 = yes

[testenv:magic]
package = sdist
pass_env = {[pkgenv]pass_env}  # sdist install builds wheel -> need packaging settings

Note that specific packaging environments are defined under testenv:.pkg and not pkgenv:.pkg, this is due backwards compatibility.

Universal wheels

If your project builds universal wheels you can avoid using multiple build environments for each targeted python by setting wheel_build_env to the same packaging environment via:

[testenv]
package = wheel
wheel_build_env = .pkg

Editable mode

tox now defaults to using editable wheels when develop mode is enabled and the build backend supports it, as defined by PEP 660 by setting package to editable. In case the backend does not support it, will fallback to package to editable-legacy, and invoke pip with -e. In the later case will also print a message to make this setting explicit in your configuration (explicit better than implicit):

[testenv:dev]
package = editable-legacy

If you want to use the new standardized method to achieve the editable install effect you should ensure your backend version is above the version this feature was added to it, for example for setuptools:

[testenv:dev]
deps = setuptools>=64
package = editable

Provisioning environment

The provisioning environment is triggered when minversion or requires are specified and the current environment does not satisfy the requirement. In tox 4, the provisioning environment (.tox by default) must be explicitly configured and will not inherit values from [testenv] section.