How do you develop a package without having to commit, push and pull all your changes all the time

The title is my question. I am always testing my package by using MyPackage now according to documentation my LOAD_PATH is checked after Pkg.dir() is checked, where my old version of MyPackage is. I want a stable version of MyPacke in Pkg.dir() for testing and comparisons. Now whenever I want to test a change to MyPackage I will have to commit my changes, push it to some repo and then pull it again inside Pkg.dir() */MyPackage ( if I feel like wasting even more time I would use Pkg.update("MyPackage") ). I also spam the repo with useless commit messages basically being “debug”.

Now this does not seem like a sane development process to me, what am I doing wrong?

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You could always set JULIA_PKGDIR to have two separate package environments.

ie. use JULIA_PKGDIR=/path/to/development/pkgdir julia to run julia without touching the stable version in your usual package directory.

I had problems to follow, what you actually try to do, but my recommendation would be:

  • learn git (especially about branching)
  • work for development with a local repository only.

You’ll need local git access (commandline or GUI) and put your stable version into a branch ‘stable’, and Pkg.checkout should enable you to select this branch.
The remote (any remote) repository you only need to share code. git works locally also.

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I typically develop in the same directory where I also keep the stable version, using “git checkout” to switch between development and stable branches. But this only works because I never need the stable version at the same time as I am working on a development branch. (In that case I guess setting the JULIA_PKGDIR environment variable would be the way to go.)

For tests that take a while to run, or that need a different OS or hardware, I’ve sometimes used git hooks. That way I can push commits to a server and it will run the tests automatically. This leads to lots of “debug” commits, but it is possible to “squash” them, to make the commit history look better.

I am not sure I understand what you are doing.

I typically create a local package with Pkg.generate, and work from there. If it is production code, I work in branches, but otherwise on the master. I only commit changes to keep track of it, and do not necessarily push/pull unless I have a repo on Github.

Learning git is quite useful. Some editors have git integration (eg Emacs), which makes working with version control really seamless.

Isn’t this exactly the use case for Revise.jl? If so, you’re in luck @Jackels – it was released just a few days ago :slight_smile: