RFC - Package Management

[Nitemaeric]

This PR is the first stepping stone for CLI-driven package management for DragonRuby.

The tool will allow developers to pull in code from GitHub (and likely other git repository hosts later once the need arises) to their local code.

As of now, I don't see any need for drenv to enforce any kind of conventions on the libraries themselves, no need for a local drenv.json or specific file structure.

The CLI will pull in the repository's code to lib/<repo>.

I plan to introduce drenv.json and generated drenv.lock files for managing dependencies.

New commands

The CLI should support the following commands:

• drenv add ...<user/repo>[@<branch|tag|SHA>]

  Adds a dependency to your DR project - Will download the code from the remote into your source code.

  e.g.

  • Add multiple libraries:

    $ drenv add danhealy/dragonruby-zif:lib pvande/dragonborn:dragonborn.rb

  • Add a specific version of a library:

    $ drenv add danhealy/[email protected]:lib

• drenv remove ...<user/repo>

  Removes a dependency from your DR project - Will also remove the code.

  e.g.

  $ drenv remove danhealy/dragonruby-zif # project path is not required for removal.

• drenv outdated

  Output the list of dependencies that have been updated since installation.

  e.g.

  $ drenv outdated
  
  | package                 | commits behind | latest commit at  |
  | ----------------------- | -------------: | ----------------- |
  | danhealy/dragonruby-zif |              9 | 20 Jan 2024 12:34 |

The drenv.json file should look like this:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "danhealy/dragonruby-zif": "danhealy/[email protected]:lib",
    "pvande/dragonborn": "pvande/dragonborn",
  }
}

A lock file should be used to ensure changing the dependencies doesn't overwrite anything unintentionally.

{
  "dependencies": {
    "danhealy/dragonruby-zif": {
      "url": "https://github.com/danhealy/dragonruby-zif.git",
      "sha": "9a0c4425fab4d0c93e9a7beece5510217edb8d17"
    },
    "pvande/dragonborn": {
      "url": "https://github.com/pvande/dragonborn.git",
      "sha": "8f04446a1dd4b190c0fbb9e2a1414c4196775385"
    }
  }
}

Technical implementation notes

• Get information about a commit.

  https://api.github.com/repos/<user>/<repo>/commits/<SHA>

• Find out how many commits behind a commit is

  https://api.github.com/repos/<user>/<repo>/compare/<SHA>...<SHA>

The SHA is saved to the lock file upon calling drenv install.

Considerations

• Is the tool doing too much? Does it make more sense to split package management out from version management?
• Should dependencies have a dedicated directory within mygame? dragonruby_modules, mirroring node_modules? Should it just be vendor?

[Nitemaeric]

Closed in favour of #9.