Introduction to Psc-Package

What is Psc-Package?

Psc-Package is a package manager for PureScript that works essentially by running a bunch of git commands. Its distinguishing feature from most package managers is that it uses a package set.

What is a Package Set?

Many users trying to rush into using Psc-Package don’t slow down enough to learn what package sets are. They are a set of packages, such that the package set only contains one entry for a given package in a set. This means that

• Whichever package you want to install must be in the package set
• The dependencies and the transitive dependencies of the package you want to install must be in the package set

Package sets are defined in packages.json in the root of any package set repository, like in https://github.com/spacchetti/spacchetti/blob/master/packages.json.

How are package sets used?

Package sets are consumed by having a psc-package.json file in the root of your project, where the contents are like below:

{
  "name": "project-name",
  "set": "set-name",
  "source": "https://github.com/spacchetti/spacchetti.git",
  "depends": [
    "aff",
    "console",
    "prelude"
  ]
}

So the way this file works is that

• "set" matches the tag or branch of the git repository of the package set
• "source" is the URL for the git repository of the package set
• "depends" is an array of strings, where the strings are names of packages you depend on

When you run psc-package install, psc-package will perform the steps so that the following directory has the package set cloned to it:

.psc-package/set-name/.set

And the package set will be available in

.psc-package/set-name/.set/packages.json

When you install a package in your given package set, the directory structure will be used, such that if you install aff from your package set at version v5.0.0, you will have the contents of that package in the directory

.psc-package/set-name/aff/v5.0.0

Once you understand these three sections, you’ll be able to solve any problems you run into with Psc-Package.