Babel is a beta-grade package manager for the Nimrod programming language.
You will need the latest Nimrod compiler from github to compile babel (version 0.9.2 may work).
Compile babel by executing: nimrod c -d:release babel
. Then simply install
babel by executing ./babel install
. You should then add ~/.babel/bin
to your $PATH.
Babel stores everything that has been installed in ~/.babel on Unix systems and in your $home/.babel on Windows. Libraries are stored in $babelDir/pkgs, and binaries are stored in $babelDir/bin.
Babel works on git repositories as its primary source of packages. Its list of
packages is stored in a JSON file which is freely accessible in the
nimrod-code/packages repository.
This JSON file provides babel with the required Git URL to clone the package
and install it. Installation and build instructions are contained inside a
ini-style file with the .babel
file extension. The babel file shares
the package's name.
When babel installs a library it will copy all the files that it downloaded
into $babelDir/pkgs/pkgname-ver
. It's up to the package creator to make sure
that the package directory layout is correct, this is so that users of the
package can correctly import the package.
By convention, it is suggested that the layout be as follows. The directory layout is determined by the nature of your package, that is, whether your package exposes only one module or multiple modules.
If your package exposes only a single module, then that module should be
present in the root directory (the directory with the babel file) of your git
repository, it is recommended that in this case you name that module whatever
your package's name is. A good example of this is the
jester package which exposes the jester
module. In this case the jester package is imported with import jester
.
If your package exposes multiple modules then the modules should be in a
PackageName
directory. This will allow for a certain measure of isolation
from other packages which expose modules with the same names. In this case
the package's modules will be imported with import PackageName/module
.
You are free to combine the two approaches described.
In regards to modules which you do not wish to be exposed. You should place
them in a PackageName/private
directory. Your modules may then import these
private modules with import PackageName/private/module
. This directory
structure may be enforced in the future.
All files and folders in the directory of where the .babel file resides will be
copied as-is, you can however skip some directories or files by setting
the SkipDirs
, SkipFiles
or SkipExt
options in your .babel file.
Directories and files can also be specified on a whitelist basis, if you
specify either of InstallDirs
, InstallFiles
or InstallExt
then
babel will only install the files specified.
[Package]
name = "ProjectName"
version = "0.1.0"
author = "Your Name"
description = "Example .babel file."
license = "MIT"
SkipDirs = "SomeDir" ; ./SomeDir will not be installed
SkipFiles = "file.txt,file2.txt" ; ./{file.txt, file2.txt} will not be installed
[Deps]
Requires: "nimrod >= 0.9.2"
All the fields (except SkipDirs
and SkipFiles
) under [Package]
are
required. [Deps]
may be ommitted.
These are application packages which require building prior to installation.
A package is automatically a binary package as soon as it sets at least one
bin
value, like so:
bin = "main"
In this case when babel install
is invoked, babel will build the main.nim
file, copy it into $babelDir/pkgs/pkgname-ver/
and subsequently create a
symlink to the binary in $babelDir/bin/
. On Windows a stub .bat file is
created instead.
Other files will be copied in the same way as they are for library packages.
Binary packages should not install .nim files so you should include
SkipExt = "nim"
in your .babel file, unless you intend for your package to
be a binary/library combo which is fine.
Dependencies are automatically installed before building.
Dependencies are specified under the [Deps]
section in a babel file.
The requires
key is used to specify them. For example:
[Deps]
Requires: "nimrod >= 0.9.2, jester > 0.1 & <= 0.5"
Dependency lists support version ranges. These versions may either be a concrete
version like 0.1
, or they may contain any of the less-than (<
),
greater-than (>
), less-than-or-equal-to (<=
) and greater-than-or-equal-to
(>=
). Two version ranges may be combined using the &
operator for example:
> 0.2 & < 1.0
which will install a package with the version greater than 0.2
and less than 1.0.
Versions of cloned packages via git or mercurial are determined through the repo's tags.
When installing a package which needs to be downloaded, after the download is complete and if the package is distributed through a VCS, babel will check the cloned repo's tags list. If no tags exist, babel will simply install the HEAD (or tip in mercurial) of the repo. If tags exist, babel will attempt to look for tags which resemble versions (e.g. v0.1) and will then find the latest version out of the available tags, once it does so it will install the package after checking out the latest version.
name
- The name of the package.version
- The current version of this package. This should be incremented after tagging the current version usinggit tag
orhg tag
.author
- The name of the author of this package.description
- A string describing the package.license
- The name of the license in which this package is licensed under.
SkipDirs
- A list of directory names which should be skipped during installation, separated by commas.SkipFiles
- A list of file names which should be skipped during installation, separated by commas.SkipExt
- A list of file extensions which should be skipped during installation, the extensions should be specified without a leading.
and should be separated by commas.InstallDirs
- A list of directories which should exclusively be installed, if this option is specified nothing else will be installed except the dirs listed here, the files listed inInstallFiles
, the files which share the extensions listed inInstallExt
, the .babel file and the binary (ifbin
is specified). Separated by commas.InstallFiles
- A list of files which should be exclusively installed, this complementsInstallDirs
andInstallExt
. Only the files listed here, directories listed inInstallDirs
, files which share the extension listed inInstallExt
, the .babel file and the binary (ifbin
is specified) will be installed. Separated by commas.InstallExt
- A list of file extensions which should be exclusively installed, this complementsInstallDirs
andInstallFiles
. Separated by commas.srcDir
- Specifies the directory which contains the .nim source files. Default: The directory in which the .babel file resides; i.e. root dir of package.bin
- A list of files which should be built separated by commas with no file extension required. This option turns your package into a binary package, babel will build the files specified and install them appropriately.backend
- Specifies the backend which will be used to build the files listed inbin
. Possible values include:c
,cc
,cpp
,objc
,js
. Default: c
requires
- Specified a list of package names with an optional version range separated by commas. Example:nimrod >= 0.9.2, jester
; with this value your package will depend onnimrod
version 0.9.2 or greater and on any version ofjester
.
Babel's packages list is stored on github and everyone is encouraged to add their own packages to it! Take a look at nimrod-code/packages to learn more.
If you would like to help, feel free to fork and make any additions you see fit and then send a pull request. If you have any questions about the project you can ask me directly on github, ask on the nimrod forum, or ask on Freenode in the #nimrod channel.
Babel has been written by Dominik Picheta and is licensed under the BSD license (Look at license.txt for more info).