nim-workspace

A Nimble-based environment for working on one or more Status Nim projects.

Prerequisites

Please install the standard C/C++ toolchain for your operating system (e.g. sudo apt install build-essentials).

The scripts in this repo will automatically take care of installing the right version of Nim and Nimble for you. To enable the automation, please install direnv from your distro's package manager or by following the instructions here:

https://github.com/direnv/direnv

Lock files workflow

Using lock files provides a convenient way to fix the versions of the dependencies(and nim itself after 1017 is in). Here it is a guide on how to perform the typical dev tasks.

Building the project

Building the project typically happens using the nimble build which will download and install the versions that are in the nimble.lock file. For multiple build targets when nim is used directly in the nimble file, nimble will call the nim from the lock file.

nim in command line and integration with the tooling

Using lock files allows using vanilla nim. This can be achieved utilizing nimble.paths file which can be generated using nimble setup command. Here it is a excerpt how that file looks like:

--noNimblePath
--path:"/home/yyoncho/.nimble/pkgs2/news-0.5-a5f1789bf650822156712fd3bdec1bf6ab4ac42e"
--path:"/home/yyoncho/.nimble/pkgs2/protobuf_serialization-0.2.0-9418459027d0d5eb30a974649dc615a76e8e4aca"
...

The paths file will be used by nimsuggest/nimlangserver as well.

Bumping dependency and testing against dev version of a dependency

When you want to bump and test a version of a depednecy, then you have to use add-project or use nimble develop <dep-name>. This will clone the dependency and then you can switch to the version you want to use. Then nimble lock will update the dependency in the lock file.

Staying up to date with changes from your team mates

Once you pull up the changes and if there are changes in the lock file then nimble sync should be called. This will download the proper versions of the dependencies and it will sync the version of the develop mode dependencies if any.

VScode

For VScode you have to install the following extension

Development workflows

Configuring your IDE/editor

Once you have direnv installed you can fire up your editor from the terminal. Note for the editors that have support for direnv you don't need to start the editor from the terminal.

Here it is sample configuration for the nim-codex project VScode(it should be placed in nim-workspace/.vscode/settings.json).

{
    "nim.provider": "lsp", // force using lsp over nimsuggest integration
    "nim.lintOnSave": false, // disable nim-check
    "nim.autoCheckProject": true, // you might want to set that to false for big projects. It will disable project compilation after saving a file.
    "nim.projectMapping": [{
        "projectFile": "nim-codex/codex.nim",
        "fileRegex": ".*\\.nim$" // force all files to be opened with once nimsuggest instance
    }],
    "nim.workingDirectoryMapping": [{
        "projectFile": "nim-codex/codex.nim",
        "directory": "nim-codex" // start nimsuggest for nim-codex/codex.nim in nim-codex folder
    }]
}

Where:

• nim.provider: "lsp" - force using lsp over nimsuggest integration
• nim.lintOnSave: false - disable nim check in vscode
• nim.autoCheckProject: true - you might want to set that to false for big projects. It will disable project compilation after saving a file. In case this is disabled you may force that using C-S-p Source Actions RET and pick Compile project.
• nim.projectMapping: configure how nimsuggest instances can be started. The value in the sample section will force all nim files to be opened with the same nimsuggest instance.
• nim.workingDirectoryMapping - the mapping is used to determine which directory to start nimsuggest(typically it is the actual project root, but nimlangserver can't guess that).

NB: make sure that you have imported the whole nim-workspace as a Workspace folder in VScode. if you don't do that you have to adjust the values in the settings file to strip the project name (i. e. nim-codex).

Commands

add-project <project-name>

Clones a Status project you intend to work on. An interactive script will ask you whether you also want to clone each of the transitive dependencies of the project. All dependencies that were not cloned for development will be installed in the Nimble cache.

Projects can be removed from the workspace by just deleting the respective directory. This will result in Nimble installing the project's package in the global cache during the next nimble build.

add-all-vendor-projects

This script must be executed within a repository using a vendor forder. It will try to add all vendored submodules as folders in the workspace.

sync-vendor-revisions-to-workspace

This script must be executed within a repository using a vendor folder. It will copy the current revisions of submodules in the vendor folder to the matching folder in the workspace if present. Typically, the script is executed after pulling git revisions from other team members that have bumped vendor sumbodules without also bumping the same packages in the Nimble lock file. To resolve the arising discrepancy, the developer would execute the following commands:

# Pull the project files as usual
cd top-level-project
git pull
make update # or git submodule update --init --recursive

# Fix the lock file
sync-vendor-revisions-to-workspace
nimble lock
git add nimble.lock
git commit -m "Update the lock file"
git push

sync-workspace-revisions-to-vendor

This script must be executed within a repository using a vendor folder. It will copy the revisions from the current workspace folders to the matching submodules in the vendor folder. When you use a workspace and make changes to the lockfile (by changing any of the dependencies) you must execute this script before commiting to reflect the same change in the vendor folder, so the respective project can continue building properly without Nimble.