elm-github-install

This node script and package that allows you to install Elm packages directly from Github, bypassing the package repository (package.elm-lang.org) while also enabling restricted (effect manager and native) packages to be installed.

Description

There are some things that made this possible:

• The basic design of Elm packages: using github, semantic versioning and tags
• Semver package to validate versions
• SemverResolver package that does the actual resolving

These are the steps the installer takes:

• Reads the dependencies from elm-package.json
• Transforms them to semver dependencies - 4.0.4 <= v < 5.0.0 becomes >= 4.0.4 < 5.0.0
• Loads the dependencies of the packages form Github and transforms them also
• Resolve the dependencies
• Install resolved dependencies into elm-stuff/packages
• Writes elm-stuff/exact-dependencies.json with the resolved dependencies

Warnings

There are some caveats though:

• [TODO] This installer doesn't check the installed elm-version
• [DEPENDENCY] Git tags (semver) are needed other references cannot be installed (branch-name, commit-hash)
• [DEPENDENCY] Git is needed
• [DEPENDENCY] Node is needed

Usage

Install it:

npm install -g elm-github-install

Elm packages are name after their github repositories, so you can simply declare the github package you want the way you would declare any other package. For example, if you want to install NoRedInk's Elm css at version 1.3.0, you would do the following:

# elm-package.json
{
  ...
  "dependencies": {
    ...
    "githubUser/repoName": "desiredVersion <= v < someLargerNumber",
    "NoRedInk/nri-elm-css": "1.3.0 <= 1.3.0 < 2.0.0",
    ...
  }
  ...
}

You can find the current version of the package in the repository's elm-package.json.

Use the command:

elm-github-install

Demonstration

The following repositories have their packages successfully installed and the main file successfully compiled (2016-06-12):

• [STANDARD] https://github.com/debois/elm-mdl/tree/v7/demo - Demo.elm
• [STANDARD] https://github.com/evancz/elm-sortable-table/tree/master/examples - 1-presidents.elm
• [HAVE GITHUB DEPS] https://github.com/gdotdesign/elm-ui-website - source/Main.elm