3pl.md

Installing 3rd party libraries

The ABS interpreter comes with a built-in installer for 3rd party libraries, very similar to npm install, pip install or go get.

The installer, budled since the 1.8.0 release, is currently experimental and a few things might change.

In order to install a package, you simply need to run abs get:

$ abs get github.com/abs-lang/abs-sample-module 
🌘  - Downloading archive
Unpacking...
Creating alias...
Install Success. You can use the module with `require("abs-sample-module")`

Modules will be saved under the vendor/$MODULE directory. Each module also gets an alias to facilitate requiring them in your code, meaning that both of these forms are supported:

⧐  require("abs-sample-module/sample.abs")
{"another": f() {return hello world;}}

⧐  require("vendor/github.com/abs-lang/abs-sample-module/sample.abs")
{"another": f() {return hello world;}}

Module aliases are saved in the packages.abs.json file which is created in the same directory where you run the abs get ... command:

$ abs get github.com/abs-lang/abs-sample-module
🌗  - Downloading archive
Unpacking...
Creating alias...
Install Success. You can use the module with `require("abs-sample-module")`

$ cat packages.abs.json 
{
    "abs-sample-module": "./vendor/github.com/abs-lang/abs-sample-module"
}

If an alias is already taken, the installer will let you know that you will need to use the full path when requiring the module:

$ echo '{"abs-sample-module": "xyz"}' > packages.abs.json 

$ abs get github.com/abs-lang/abs-sample-module
🌘  - Downloading archive
Unpacking...
Creating alias...This module could not be aliased because module of same name exists

Install Success. You can use the module with `require("./vendor/github.com/abs-lang/abs-sample-module")`

When requiring a module, ABS will try to load the index.abs file unless another file is specified:

$ ~/projects/abs/builds/abs                                          
Hello alex, welcome to the ABS (1.11.0) programming language!
Type 'quit' when you're done, 'help' if you get lost!

⧐  require("abs-sample-module")
{"another": f() {return hello world;}}

⧐  require("abs-sample-module/index.abs")
{"another": f() {return hello world;}}

⧐  require("abs-sample-module/another.abs")
f() {return hello world;}

Supported hosting platforms

Currently, the installer supports modules hosted on:

• GitHub

Next

That's about it for this section!

You can now head over to read a little bit about errors.