Ven package manager

What is Ven and why have we built it?

As of 2017, golang did not ship with a proper, production-ready package manager. There are many other alternatives, but all that we tried had serious issues (details coming later).

We decided to build our own to accommodate a very simple workflow:

• Store dependencies locally and check them in
• Remove non-go dependency files in most cases to avoid storing a ton of files

Installing Ven

Clone the repo into the proper location in your go path, like:

go_workspace/src/github.com/cliqueinc/ven

Install the ven command $ cd ven && go install

The ven command will not be available in your terminal unless you have go_workspace/bin in your PATH. Please see How to write go code for more info.

Usage

Once you have ven installed and it is available in your terminal, simply go to the root directory of your own go project and add some dependencies using ven get github.com/someuser/someproject! Enjoy.

Usage:
  ven [command]

Available Commands:
  fetch       Fetch fetches dependencies for current project.
  get         Gets list of specified packages with its dependencies.
  help        Help about any command
  init        Init defines a manifest for current project.

Commands

• Get

  Get supports importing specific version of package (by tag, branch name or commit hash) and local packages

  Usage:
    ven get [packages to import] [flags]
  
  Flags:
    -h, --help          help for get
    -u, --update        update package if exists
        --update-deps   update package dependencies
  

• Init

  Init defines a manifest for current project.

  Usage:
  ven init [flags]
  
  Flags:
        --exclude-builds stringSlice   builds to exclude from import (default [appenginevm,appengine,android,integration,ignore])
        --exclude-dirs stringSlice     directories to exclude from import (default [cmd])
    -h, --help                         help for init
  

  • Fetch

  Fetch fetches dependencies for current project.

  Usage:
  ven fetch
  

Manifest sample:

exclude_dir:
- cmd
exclude_build:
- appenginevm
- appengine
- android
- integration
- ignore
local_packages: []
constraints:
  github.com/labstack/echo: v2.2.0
packages:
  github.com/davecgh/go-spew:
    version: v1.1.0
    commithash: adab96458c51a58dc1783b3335dcce5461522e75
    deps: []
  github.com/dgrijalva/jwt-go:
    version: v3.0.0
    commithash: a539ee1a749a2b895533f979515ac7e6e0f5b650
    deps: []
  github.com/klauspost/compress:
    version: v1.2.1
    commithash: f3dce52e0576655d55fd69e74b63da96ad1108f3
    deps:
    - github.com/klauspost/cpuid

• exclude_dir - array of directories to exclude from import.
• exclude_build - array of build tags to exclude from searching for dependencies, for example windows, appengine.
• local_packages - list of packages to search in a local filesystem.
• constraints - constraints for a specific packages, if not set, the latest version of a package will be loaded, or the one specified in a get command.
• packages - list of downloaded packages.

Upgrading Ven

Simply git pull in the ven repo you checked out previous and run go install again.