The Scala Bazaar system, "sbaz" in short, is a system used by Scala enthusiasts to share computer files with each other. In particular, it makes it easy to share libraries and applications. Just like with a real-life bazaar, working within a bazaar provides you with extra opportunities offered by other people, and gives you an easy way to share any offerings you wish to make to others in the community.
This tutorial steps you through the basic essentials of working with Scala bazaars.
The sbaz system puts everything it installs into a managed
directory. To create your first managed directory, use any of
the standard Scala
installers and install Scala into a directory where you have write
access. Within the standard installation directory will be an initial
managed directory. Depending on the installation method you use, that
directory might be the main install directory or it might be in
share/scala within the main install directory. Wherever
it is, there should be a directory named meta within the
managed directory. For simplicity, this tutorial will call this
directory sbaz, but it may be placed anywhere on your
system you like.
The directory sbaz/bin includes a sbaz
command that is your interface to the bazaar. This is the command
that manages your sbaz directory and allows you to
download packages and upload package advertisements.
Try running sbaz/bin/sbaz and see if you get a friendly
help message. If it does not work, the most likely reason is that
there is not a suitable java command in your PATH. If
not, you need to set up a Java virtual machine on your computer and
add the appropriate directory to your PATH. The details of setting up
Java vary for every platform and are thus beyond the scope of this
tutorial.
For maximum convenience, you should add the managed directory's
bin directory to your PATH. The rest of this tutorial
assumes you have done so.
You can see a list of packages that are available by running
sbaz available. To see information about a particular
package, you can type sbaz show packname.
To install a package, simply type sbaz install
packname. The system will install the newest
available version of that package for you. If you change your mind,
do sbaz remove packname. If you want to
install a specific version of a package, you can use sbaz
install packname/version.
Each managed directory has a local cache of available packages. If
you want to get the newest list of packages, you need to run
sbaz update.
To upgrade your packages, run sbaz upgrade. This
command automatically runs update and then installs the
newest version of every package it can. This command can potentially
do a lot of work, so you may want to use the -n flag to
see what it plans to do before you actually try it: sbaz -n
upgrade.
If you would like to upgrade an individual package, use the
install subcommand; even if some version of the package
is already installed, install will.
Heavy Scala users occasionally develop code that they would like to share with others in the bazaar style of open source development. To do so, you will need to (1) create a package, (2) post it on the WWW, and (3) register it on the bazaar.
To create a package, make a directory tree that you would like to
share with people. To start with, you could include just
lib/yourpackage.jar.
Then run sbaz pack to create a package out of that
directory. The basic usage is:
sbaz pack
packname
directory-to-pack
--linkbase
url
The url you specify should be for a directory on the web where you can post files. The package name is packname, and the directory-to-pack is the directory tree you have prepared.
After you run this command, you will have two files in the current
directory: packname-0.0.sbp and
packname-0.0.advert. You can test your package
by doing sbaz install -f packname-0.0.sbp and
then looking through your managed directory to make sure it was
installed as you intended.
Once you are satisfied with your package, you should upload the
sbp file to the directory you specified as url.
Then, run sbaz share packname-0.0.advert. At
this point, your package is publicly available!
Once you have a basic package, you can improve it in various ways:
sbaz pack, and fill them
in. To see the available options, type sbaz help
pack.
sbaz show
to get a list of the included files.
doc/sbaz
in your managed directory, and read the section on "Suggested
Directory Layout".
By the way, if you ever change your mind and want to retract a
package you have shared, use the retract subcommand:
sbaz retract yourpackage/version
For more information, you might use the following resources:
$Id$