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How to setup a Juvix project

A juvix project is a collection of juvix modules plus some extra metadata gathered in a juvix.yaml file. The most convenient way to create a juvix project is to run the command juvix init.

Juvix YAML file

A project is rooted in a directory. The root is set by creating a juvix.yaml, which contains the following fields, no order is required:

  • name
  • version
  • dependencies
  • main

The fields are explained below.

  • name: This is the name assigned to the project. The name must not be empty and cannot exceed 100 characters. Lower case letters, digits and hyphen - are acceptable characters. The first letter must not be a hyphen. Summarizing, it must match the following regexp: [a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]{0,99}.
  • version (optional): The version of the project. It must follow the SemVer specification. If the version is missed then it will be assumed to be 0.0.0.
  • main (optional): The main module of the project used as entry point.
  • dependencies (optional): The dependencies of the project is given as a list. See below for more information.

Note

As intuition would tell, a Juvix module belongs to a Juvix project if it is placed in the subtree hanging from the root directory. This rule has two exceptions:

  1. Modules in a hidden (or hanging from a hidden) directory are not part of the project. E.g., if the root of a project is dir, then the module dir/.d/Lib.juvix does not belong to the project rooted in dir.
  2. A juvix.yaml file shadows other juvix.yaml files in parent directories. E.g. if the root of a project is dir and the files dir/juvix.yaml and dir/nested/juvix.yaml exist, then the module dir/nested/Lib.juvix would belong to the project in dir/nested.

Note

Any Juvix module outside of a project is considered a standalone module and lives in its own (global) project. In other words, there is no need to create a juvix.yaml file for a standalone module.

Package dependencies

In order to specify the list of dependencies for a package, the field dependencies has been added to the juvix.yaml. The dependencies field is a list of directories (relative or absolute) or git dependencies. If the dependency is a directory then its location must contain a juvix.yaml file. As expected, if we add a package to the list of dependencies, we will be able to access its modules through import statements. External dependencies are supported through git dependencies.

By default, the compiler include the standard library as a dependency, and therefore a user can use it including the following line in the juvix.yaml

# -- juvix.yaml
dependencies:
  - .juvix-build/stdlib/
file: []
name: juvix-docs
version: 0.0.0

External dependencies

To use external dependencies, it is required to have git installed. You can add a git block to the dependencies list:

name: HelloWorld
main: HelloWorld.juvix
dependencies:
  - .juvix-build/stdlib
  - git:
      url: https://my.git.repo
      name: myGitRepo
      ref: main
version: 0.1.0

Git block required fields:

  • url: The URL of the git repository

  • ref: The git reference that should be checked out

Note

The values of the name fields must be unique among the git blocks in the dependencies list.

  • name: The name for the dependency. This is used to name the directory of the clone, it is required. Perhaps we could come up with a way to automatically name the clone directory. Current ideas are to somehow encode the URL / ref combination or use a UUID. However, there's some value in having the clone directory named in a friendly way.

Behaviour

When dependencies for a package are registered, at the beginning of the compiler pipeline, all remote dependencies are processed:

  1. If it does not already exist, the remote dependency is cloned to .juvix-build/deps/$name
  2. git fetch is run in the clone
  3. git checkout at the specified ref is run in the clone

Note

  • Remote dependencies of transitive dependencies are also processed.
  • The git fetch step is required for the case where the remote is updated.

Fixing errors

  • Missing fields in the Git dependency block are YAML parse errors
  • Duplicate name values in the dependencies list is an error thrown when the package file is processed
  • The ref does not exist in the clone or the clone directory is otherwise corrupt. An error with a suggestion to juvix clean is given. The package file path is used as the location in the error message.
  • Other git command errors (command not found, etc.), a more verbose error is given with the arguments that were passed to the git command.