Creating Packages
Last updated on 2023-09-15 | Edit this page
Overview
Questions
- “How to create a package?”
Objectives
- “Learn setting up a project using modules.”
- “Learn common package structure.”
- “Learn to browse GitHub or juliahub for packages and find documentation.”
Melissa is now confident that her module is fine and she wants to make it available for the rest of her physics club. She decides to put it in a package. This way she can also locally use Julia’s package manager for managing her module.
From project to package
The path from having a module to having a package is actually very
short: Packages need a name and a uuid field
in their Project.toml.
A UUID is a universally unique
identifier. Thankfully Julia comes with the
UUIDs package, that can generate uuids for
Melissa via UUIDs.uuid4().
In addition Melissa needs to have a specific directory structure. She
looks at the example package Example.jl
which has the following structure:
├── docs
│ ├── make.jl
│ ├── Project.toml
│ └── src
│ └── index.md
├── LICENSE.md
├── Project.toml
├── README.md
├── src
│ └── Example.jl
└── test
└── runtests.jl Generating project MelissasPackage:
MelissasPackage/Project.toml
MelissasPackage/src/MelissasPackage.jl
Now Melissa can use
instead of needing to includet MelissasModule.jl, and
she can write using MelissasModule instead of
.using MelissasModule.
Register a package
In order for her friends to be able to get the package, Melissa registers the package in the general registry. This can be done either via JuliaHub or by making a pull request on GitHub which can also be automated by the Julia Registrator.
Creating a new package
Melissa thinks next time she will start with a package right away.
Browsing the packages she found PkgTemplates.jl and PkgSkeleton.jl which makes setting up the typical folder structure very easy.