Better git management

[dom96]

When a package is installed at a specific git commit or branch then the repo should be cloned and Nimble should then detect that a general git package has been installed (not a standalone version). It should checkout the correct commit/branch as required for the dependencies and keep the branch at #head by default.

[oderwat]

Is there a concept about how this is suppose to work in the future?

I mean something like having a cache location for the repositories? Currently it clones it on every run into a new temp dir if I saw that correctly?

I also don't think that nimble should go into the net on every build. Even if I have "#head" branches. I would expect to have a manual command to refresh. Maybe a mechanism which tells me that I may have outdated repositories in my cache.

[dom96]

I also don't think that nimble should go into the net on every build. Even if I have "#head" branches. I would expect to have a manual command to refresh. Maybe a mechanism which tells me that I may have outdated repositories in my cache.

That's a good idea.

[dom96]

My current rough thoughts/plans:

• We cannot simply clone a package's repo into ~/.nimble/pkgs/pkgname-git, because the package needs to be installed. The reason for this is due to the srcDir feature: a package's source code may be inside a src directory. As an example, cloning jester into ~./nimble/pkgs/jester-git would work because jester.nim would then be available in ~/.nimble/pkgs/jester-git/jester.nim. But if the jester source code was put inside a src dir then the jester.nim file would be in ~/.nimble/pkgs/jester-git/src/jester.nim and you'd need to import it via import src/jester which is incorrect.

• The underlying problem that this issue describes is that we don't want to constantly re-clone the dependencies. A good solution is to clone them into ~/.nimble/repos/, then install to ~/.nimble/pkgs.

• Let's say we want to install nimble@#head, and the latest tagged version of it is 0.1.0. It shouldn't be installed into ~/.nimble/pkgs/nimble-0.1.0 but into ~/.nimble/pkgs/nimble-#head instead. Nimble will then use this installation when a package requests nimble@#head, of course after some time this installation will become outdated...

• That's where [RFC] nimble update #169 will come in. You'll be able to update your dependencies by running nimble update (this still needs to be thought about a bit more).

[dom96]

Installing compiler@#head will now copy it into ~/.nimble/pkgs/compiler-#head :D

This means that Nimble will no longer continue to reinstall packages with a "special" version (#head or #branch or #abcd231). You can still reinstall them manually by running nimble install compiler@#head or similar. This is already much better and wasn't too difficult to implement!

[dom96]

Only thing left for this issue is to clone into ~/.nimble/repos instead of /tmp. Then reuse the clones when reinstalling the same package.