MANUL

Manul is a vendoring utility for Go programs.

What's the reason for yet another utility?

Because all other vendor utilities suffer from the following:

Some wrap the go binary and spoof the GOPATH env variable. You will have a non-go-gettable project which needs additional software in order to compile and run;
Some copy the source code of dependencies into the vendor directory:
- It will be nearly impossible to find anything using GitHub Search, because you will get many false-positive results;
- Updating dependencies will require manual intervention and committing a lot of modified lines straight into the main repo;
- You will not be able to tell what version of dependency your project is using will by looking at repository; you have to keep versions in the additional ambiguous file with vendors associated with commits.
Various architecture problems:
- Impossible to update all or specific vendored dependencies;
- Impossible to rollback vendored dependencies to specific version;
- Impossible to remove unused vendored dependencies;
- Impossible to lock version of vendored dependency.

Solution

We all love git, it's a very powerful instrument. Why don't we use its power for vendoring dependencies using an awesome feature, which is called git submodule?

With git submodule you will have a git repository for each dependency. They can be managed in the same way as main project by git.

Pros:

No need for additional software for building/running your Go project;
No need for additional JSON/TOML/YAML file for storing dependencies;
Update vendored dependencies directly from remote origins;
Rollback changes in dependencies;
Go-gettable

git submodule might look like a Silver Bullet, but it's still clumsy to work with manually. We want to have a powerful yet simple interface for vendoring dependencies using this technology.

manul can do it for us.

Usage

Who needs a documentation when there are GIFs?

First of all, we should request dependencies which we have in our project. To do this, just run manul with -Q (query) flag. It will output all the project imports (dependencies), like this:

For example, we have six dependencies, let's lock versions of critical dependencies by adding submodules: in our case it's zhash and blackfriday packages.

For locking versions (installing dependencies) we should use -I (install) flag and specify dependencies, which we wish to install:

After installation we can have a look for vendored and non-vendored dependencies by using flag -Q. After previous step we should see git commits along with two already vendored dependencies (zhash and blackfriday):

Let's install submodules for remaining dependencies, go the limit! Just run manul with flag -I without specifying any dependencies, manul will install all detected dependencies with skipping already vendored:

Wow, that was crazy! Now, to update some vendored dependencies, for example, docopt-go package, manul should be invoked with the flag -U and import path (github.com/docopt/docopt-go):

manul can be used to remove specified submodules of vendored dependencies by using -R (remove) flag and specifying dependencies import path:

By the way, manul can detect and remove unused vendored dependencies using -C (clean) flag:

Let's summarize:

-I [<dependency>...] - install git submodules for specified/all dependencies;
-U [<dependency>...] - update specified/all already vendored dependencies;
-R [<dependency>...] - remove git submodules for specified/all dependencies;
-Q [<dependency>...] - list all used dependencies;
-C - detect and remove all git submodules for unused vendored dependencies.

You can see similar help message by passing -h or --help flag.

Installation

Ubuntu/Debian:

git clone --branch pkg-debian git://github.com/kovetskiy/manul /tmp/manul
cd /tmp/manul
./build.sh
dpkg -i *.deb

Arch Linux:

Install manul from AUR, or build the package manually:

git clone --branch pkg-archlinux git://github.com/kovetskiy/manul /tmp/manul
cd /tmp/manul
makepkg
pacman -U *.xz

Other distros

manul can be obtained using go get:

go get github.com/kovetskiy/manul

erizocosmico/manul