Hello everyone!
In first, Required isn’t finished yet, but a lot of things are already here. I want discuss with you about the project for doing something really useful for the community.
So, what is exactly Required?
Dependencies
It’s a program for manage dependencies. More and more libraries are developed by all the community : buttons, graphs, structures, shaders, … But, I think, a lot are not used because the way to share it isn’t a right one. With Required, you need to describe your project in a file named ‘package’ like this little example:
return json.decode([[{
"id":"7802bd00e7d56d480379",
"name":"Required",
"description":"Required is a little framework for Codea to manage local and gist dependencies",
"author":"HyroVitalyProtago",
"version":"0.0.30",
"codea":"2.3.1",
"ignore":["local"],
"dependencies":[
"gist@HyroVitalyProtago:Btn:*"
]
}]])
With the Required project as a dependency, when you launch your project, all dependencies are preloaded and you can access it with
require.import 'HyroVitalyProtago.Btn.Btn' -- owner.project.file
Versions can be defined like:
- ‘*’ : the last version
- ‘1.*’ : the last version with 1 as major number
- ‘1.0.*’ : the last version with 1 as major number and 0 as minor number
- ‘1.0.3’ : the specific version
Modules
One constraint is about the module definition. I totally dislike the principle of tab orders (even if it’s more practical for some little projects). So, all modules needs to be defined like this :
return (function() -- required line
-- example of a class module
-- load others module
local AnotherFileInProject = required.import 'AnotherFileInProject'
-- create a new class
local MyFirstModule = class(AnotherFileInProject)
-- Write your classe like before
function MyFirstModule:init() AnotherFileInProject.init(self) end
function MyFirstModule:doNothing() end
-- return the module
return MyFirstModule
end) -- required line
In the function encapsulation, you can do what you want, if you return nothing, the environment is return, like in the example below:
return (function() -- Main
function setup() end
function draw() end
function touched() end
end)
(required.import 'Main').setup() -- call the setup function of Main
There is some exception with the Main file. It’s not a mandatory to write it as a module, but you can’t use required.import outside a function
Something = required.import 'Something' -- bad, doesn't work...
local Something -- define as local best practices
function setup()
Something = required.import 'Something' -- good, work like a charm!
end
Repositories for sharing
After think a little about a beautiful to share things, this is what I’ve found. There is one main repository (the mine by default),
who contains all public release for each modules like this :
{
"Required":{
"id":"7802bd00e7d56d480379",
"versions":{
"1.0.0":"8c783334045e456bc765ca27ed9d5b12db03aac6"
}
},
"Btn":{
"id":"055093e0ec4f511e8fb6",
"versions":{
"1.0.0":"a3f69a1d889883bcf376964c49671fad66e8f0d9"
}
}
}
All repositories are defined for one user: the owner. All repositories is a fork from the main repository. For found all projects, start from the main and go into each children (forked repositories).
This procedure needs to be automated (and this is not very difficult). After, all needs to be in a file (like a cache or “cookie”) in local for a faster search the next time…
Version control
Required allows you to directly push a new revision into the same gist and increase the major, minor or patch version number. For the moment I use parameters. You can also download a project with required.fetch 'HyroVitalyProtago.Btn.*' -- owner.project.version.
Todo list
- Support multiple dependencies with context
- Support repositories process (with publishing, updating, …)
- Add auto update protocol for Required (at least)
- Do an installer (Downloader is already done)
- Support assets with Dropbox ? (I don’t know for the moment what it’s possible to do with gist, but I know it will possible with Dropbox)
- Support Github, README, …
- Clean code
- Test, test, test, … (test?)
You can test the current version:
function setup()
http.request("https://api.github.com/gists/7802bd00e7d56d480379", function(data, status, headers)
http.request(json.decode(data).files["Installer.lua"].raw_url, function(data)
(assert(loadstring(data))()()).download()
end, alert)
end, alert)
end
You can PM me or write in this Thread for more precisions, questions, etc…
What do you think about? suggestions? critics?
Thanks in advance!