The upcoming Nim version will ship with the Atlas "package cloner" tool.
Atlas provides an isolated workspace where you can manage projects and their dependencies effortlessly. ## Key Concepts 1. Workspaces: Each workspace is completely isolated, ensuring no sharing of resources. To create a workspace in your current directory, simply use the command atlas init. 2. Projects: A workspace can contain one or multiple projects. Projects can easily interact with each other, enabling seamless development of multiple projects simultaneously. 3. Dependencies: Inside a workspace, dependencies are stored in the _deps (name is configurable) directory. Moving a dependency to a higher level turns it into a project, and vice versa. The only distinction between a project and a dependency is their location, and project always takes priority during dependency resolution. ## No Magic Atlas provides a transparent approach to package management. It manages two important files, `project.nimble` and `nim.cfg`, without interfering with any untouched configurations. ## Commands Supported: `Use <url> / <package name>`: Clone a package and its dependencies into the _deps directory, making it accessible to your current project. Atlas automatically handles the configuration of the necessary files, such as $project.nimble and nim.cfg, simplifying the import process. `Clone/Update <url> / <package name>`: Clone a URL and its dependencies recursively into the workspace. The nim.cfg file is created or patched with the required --path entries. `Search <term term2 term3 ...>`: Search the package index packages.json for packages that match the given terms in their description, name, or tags. Also searches github directly because many packages are never registered in packages.json. `Install <proj.nimble>`: Use the specified .nimble file to set up the project's dependencies. `UpdateProjects / updateDeps [filter]`: Update all projects or dependencies in the workspace that have a matching remote URL based on the provided filter. Updates are only performed when there are no uncommitted changes. `tag <version>`: Tag and publish a new version. ## Work in progress Atlas is in the early stages of development. As a result, not all packages are currently compatible with it. Atlas installs the _minimal_ required version of a package. This information is extracted from the Nimble file and is wrong more often than it is correct because nobody checks this. Additionally, Atlas relies on GitHub tags to detect versions, which means that if tags are missing, the proper version cannot be selected. ## Open design questions * How to provide a URL override mechanism so that private closed source git repositories can be accessed too. Currently it is only supported by depending on a URL rather than a package name which is inconvenient. * How to provide a "build docs/tests" feature. Currently it simply delegates to Nimble for this. But Nimble delegates to the Nim compiler so we could cut out the middle-man. * How to deal with Nimble's post install hooks etc. Currently these are simply ignored. * How to integrate it with a "virtual Nim environment" feature. I fear that most of these questions have no clean solution because Atlas is fundamentally not a build tool. Its only job is to setup a `nim.cfg`, the Nim compiler should be called manually afterwards.
