Installing a self-built crate (lib) with alr?

Karl-Goethebier · January 25, 2025, 5:26pm

How do I install a crate with alr that I have built myself locally? It’s a library - anet to be more precise. I can of course copy the library somewhere but…

jere · January 25, 2025, 5:53pm

I’m still a bit of an alire newbie myself, but I popped into the docs at the alire website and this is what I found (below). Is this what you are looking for hopefully?

New subcommand alr install

PR #1302

A new subcommand alr install allows the installation of binaries to a location intended to be added to the user’s PATH. The default install location is $HOME/.alire, with binaries going into $HOME/.alire/bin.

This is a experimental feature that will see improvements and tweaks in further PRs and as we gather feedback on its usage.

At present, only binary releases can be installed (e.g., compilers, gprbuild, gnatprove). There is no ability to uninstall releases either (but reinstallation can be forced).

Only one version per executable can be installed, meaning that, for example, only one toolchain version can exist in an installation prefix. So, this feature is intended to make the user’s preferred version of a crate generally available in the system for use outside of Alire, but not to replace e.g. the ability of Alire to use several compilers, or to reuse compiled libraries as dependencies in several workspaces.

Examples:
$ alr install gnatprove
ⓘ Installing gnatprove=12.1.1...
ⓘ Installation complete.

$ alr install
Installation prefix found at /home/jano/.alire
Contents:
   gnatprove=12.1.1

$ PATH+=:$HOME/.alire/bin gnatprove --version
Usage: gnatprove -Pproj [switches] [-cargs switches]
...

$ alr install gnatprove^11
error: Requested release gnatprove=11.2.3 has another version already
installed: gnatprove=12.1.1. (This error can be overridden with --force.)

$ alr --force install gnatprove^11  # Downgrade installation

If that is related to what you are looking for, then I got it here: Alire - Docs

I think you just cd into the top level of your crate and use alr install (with whatever options make sense for you)

If not, I apologize.

Karl-Goethebier · January 25, 2025, 6:18pm

It worked - in ~./alire/lib/anet=0.1.0-dev/anet/.alire’ is libanet.so → …/anet/libanet.so.0.1.0 `! Thanks! I had also seen the command but didn’t realize that it would work.

Karl-Goethebier · January 25, 2025, 6:54pm

It is there, sure. But now I need to figure out how to configure/update a local index as alr with anet doesn’t know anything about the new kid on the block. The docs ibidem are a little tight regarding this point.

jere · January 25, 2025, 8:59pm

Does this document help at all:

github.com

alire-project/alire/blob/b44efe6a062e3a9a81f9cf32b123ebb30a6aeadf/doc/private-crates.md

# Using Alire with private crates

By default, Alire uses the open-source crates available through the community
index, but it can also be configured to fetch non-public crates (e.g. during
development or when working with proprietary code). There are two key components
required to make a crate available to Alire; the crate must be searchable in an
*index* (though this requirement can be temporarily circumvented with
[pins](catalog-format-spec#work-in-progress-dependency-overrides)), and the
crate's source files must be fetchable from an *origin*.


## Using a private index

### Creating an index

An Alire index is nothing more than a directory containing a collection of
release manifest files in a certain directory structure. Full details of the
format of an index can be found in
[the catalog format specification](catalog-format-spec).

This file has been truncated. show original

Karl-Goethebier · January 26, 2025, 10:02am

Unfortunately my alr doesn’t recognize --for-private-index. I continue investigating.

See also: Docs: Unclear how to use local crate - this is from 2022.

jere · January 26, 2025, 1:33pm

It might be worth putting up a GitHub issue if --for-private-index isn’t working. Link to that doc as well

Sorry I don’t know much more. I’m new to alire as well

Karl-Goethebier · January 26, 2025, 7:23pm

Got it:


karl@rantanplan:~/src/ada/super$ alr with anet
ⓘ Synchronizing workspace...
Dependencies automatically updated as follows:

   ✗ anet 0.1.0-dev (removed)

Requested changes:          

   ✓ anet ~0.1.0-dev (add)
                            
Changes to dependency solution:

   + anet 0.1.0-dev (new)

Do you want to proceed?
[Y] Yes  [N] No  (default is Yes) yes

karl@rantanplan:~/src/ada/super$ alr index
# NAME      URL                                                           PATH                                            
1 community git+https://github.com/alire-project/alire-index#stable-1.3.0 /home/karl/.config/alire/indexes/community/repo
2 local     file:///home/karl/local-idx                                  /home/karl/local-idx                           
karl@rantanplan:~/src/ada/super$ alr index --check
✓ No issues found in index contents.

Tomorrow I’ll write a recipe…

BTW:

karl@rantanplan:~/src/ada/fubar$ apt search libanet
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
libanet0.4.3/jammy 0.4.2-4 amd64
  Ada networking library

libanet5-dev/jammy 0.4.2-4 amd64
  Ada networking library (development)

The journey is the destination.

mosteo · February 7, 2025, 11:21am

This is a new feature in the master branch, no release has it yet.

Currently what you can do is use --skip-submit and you’ll end with the manifest that has to be placed in your personal index.