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Change --dragon option for smart build to pull from PyPI #797
Description
Description
We should remove the --dragon option from smart build CLI.
Justification
SmartSim no longer directly supports Dragon and does not have a Dragon based launcher. This option effectively just removes redundant options and simplifies the build process for end users.
Implementation Strategy
This should be a relatively simple pass through the smartsim._core._cli modules and removing any references to the --dragon flag in the argparser or .dragon attr on the generated namespace. If we REALLY want to preserve backward compatibility we can keep the --dragon flag as a no-op, but I would recommend removing entirely as SmartSim is at EOL and I don't think that flag is used by any current users.
Activity
[-]Remove `--dragon` from `smart build`[/-][+]Change `--dragon` option for `smart build` to pull from PyPI[/+]MattToast commentedon Apr 22, 2026
The Dragon launcher actually is still shipped with SmartSim, but we are manually pulling a very old release of dragon from GitHub.
Dragon is now released on PyPI, but requires a
dragon-configcall to utilize HSTA. It might be worth experimenting with pulling from PyPI, but I imagine changes in the dragon API may make this a non--trivial translation.MattToast commentedon May 12, 2026
Likely not going to add
[dragon]to optional dependencies due to EoL and amount of time for support. Instead we will just raise a warning when using dragon features (and maybe??? point them for PyPI for manual upgrades)