I was looking for a good guide on how to set up a new julia project/application, so that it is reproducible, and stays up to date with its dependencies.
My coworkers were setting up a new julia project, and I couldn’t find any good “getting started setting up a new project” advice online. Does anyone know of any existing guides like this?
Here is what I recommended to them:
commit your *.toml files (created when you Pkg.add() dependencies)
this will open a PR to your repo whenever there is a breaking change released in your dependencies.
You should test these PRs and merge them only if everything still works
Ideally you should also set up automated CI tests, to make sure that your project continues working as you update the SDK and make other changes.
finally, you’ll want to run Pkg.update() every once in a while and commit the changes (after testing) to keep up to date with patch releases of your dependencies
Does a guide already exist that covers these kinds of steps? It’s especially important to me to recommend that they include CompatHelper (and ideally CI.yml as well).
Also, I should say:
I looked at these two pages in the Manual, but I don’t feel that they sufficiently covered the “extra stuff” I mentioned above:
I think I would be happy to recommend them to set up a full Julia Package. As long as there is a clear and straightforward guide to get started, I think that sounds like a great recommendation, yeah.
Do you feel that there is already a good guide on getting started setting up a Julia package that has all of the above?
With using PkgTemplates; Template(interactive=true)("MyPkg") I think most of the above should be covered as it will ask for the available options which should be added.
I think PkgTemplates might already add CompatHelper.yml by default as well!
PkgTemplates is a great suggestion, but I was worried that for someone just getting started with Julia, that it might be still a bit mysterious how to use it.
But actually on reflection, I think you’re right that it’s the best thing to recommend for new people as well. (It’s what I use to create packages .)
One is that if they’ve already started their project, it’s less obvious how to turn it into a good project using PkgTemplates (usually i will create a new package and then copy all the files it generated into my git repository… but this is already starting to be pretty unwieldy).
But also, regarding this question: do note that in this case they’re trying to set up a private project, to share with their consulting clients, and they do not want to create a public package.
I know that it’s easy to control that, but I just wanted to note that a guide for “how to create a public package” isn’t exactly what we’re after.
Thanks for all the great recommendations so far! My coworker said this guide was particularly helpful, @ufechner7!
PkgTemplates is a great suggestion, but I was worried that for someone just getting started with Julia, that it might be still a bit mysterious how to use it.
I have a PR to the julia vscode extension which I’m hoping might help for new users if it’s merged. It exposes a Create New Project command that uses PkgTemplates under the hood but without the need for the user to install or understand how to use it.
As long as there is a clear and straightforward guide to get started, I think that sounds like a great recommendation, yeah.