Nawabs

Nawabs ("nobody agrees with this approach of building software") is a tool that builds upon Nimble's package repository, but throws away the fragile versioning specifications, instead it uses commit hashes.

Nawabs was built with the following design goals:

• Manage a collection of "packages". This collection is called a "workspace", a package is a git or mercurial repository.
• Build packages.
• Record the state of the workspace that used to compile/work to get "reproducible builds" (also called "Pinned Builds").

A pinned build is described by a "recipe": The recipe file is a NimScript that can be executed again to get a reproducible build. It stores the project's dependencies as well as the used commit hashes.

Recipe files are also version controlled.

To make a workspace out of the current working directory run nawabs init.

Every direct child directory in the workspace is treated as a package. Subdirectories are part of the package search space if they end in an underscore. As an example consider this directory layout:

workspace/

nimcore_/

jester/ compiler/

c2nim/ backup/

c2nim

c2nim is a package since it's a direct child of the workspace, jester and compiler are part of the workspace since they are under nimcore_ which ends in an underscore. backup/c2nim is not part of the workspace because backup doesn't end in an underscore.

Installation

• nim c -d:release nawabs.nim
• Copy the nawabs[.exe] binary and the nawabs_config directory to a directory that is in your PATH. Alternatively add it to your PATH.

To build the optional nimble emulator use:

• nim c --out:nimble[.exe] fakenimble.

Nimble emulation

Unfortunately many Nim related build tools build on top of nimble. Nawabs comes with a helper program you can use to replace your stock nimble.exe.

Commands

nawabs init

Make the current working directory your workspace.

nawabs search keyword

Search through the list of available packages after keyword.

nawabs build pkg

Nawabs clones 'pkg' (if it doesn't exist yet) and tries to build it.

nawabs pinned pkg

Rebuilds 'pkg' in the same configuration that was successful the last time.

nawabs update pkg

Updates 'pkg' and its dependencies to use the latest commits (aka git HEAD).

For a complete list of commands, run nawabs --help.