subverting Elm packaging since 2019

status: works for me, might eat your files

shelm is a bash wrapper around the elm tool that allows bypassing the Elm packaging infrastructure.

It allows you to

• depend on Elm packages that have not been published to package.elm-lang.org, such as versioned Github releases, local paths or arbitrary git urls.
• work with native Javascript code: Depend on modified versions of core Elm modules or write your own kernel modules by placing a package within the elm/ or elm-explorations/ package namespace.

Note: Best not talk about this on the offical Elm channels unless you're trolling.

shelm expects to be called from the top level directory of an Elm project, which contains an elm.json file. The basic workflow is: First call shelm fetch to download dependencies into the local package cache. Then call shelm make as you would usually call elm make. (Other elm subcommands are passed through, too, but might not work.)

With a regular elm.json, there should be no functional difference to normal elm tool use. To make use of shelm's extra features, you might:

• Add dependencies for a packages that have not been released to the Elm package repository. Suppose you have an Elm package in a GitHub repository me/elm-experiment that you haven't published using elm publish. Then if you tag a commit as "1.0.0", depending on

  "dependencies": {
      "direct": {
          ...
          "me/elm-experiment": "1.0.0",
          ...
  

  in elm.json as usual will make shelm download the 1.0.0 release.

• Specify alternative locations for dependencies. E.g., to use a patched version of the elm/time package that's published at github.com/me/elm-time, you would change the dependency section of elm.json to read

  "dependencies": {
      "direct": {
          ...
          "elm/time": "1.0.0"
      },
      "indirect": {
          ...
      },
      "locations": {
          "elm/time": {
              "method": "github",
              "name": "me/elm-time"
          }
      }
  }
  

  See below for full documentation of the "locations" field.

shelm currently supports the following location types:

github

Parameters: name as "author/project".

Tagged GitHub releases, as used by regular elm packages. Downloads the source archive for the release specified by the dependency version.

See above for an example.

file

Parameters: path as a local directory.

Copies over the given path as the source.

E.g., if you're developing my-fancy-gui-toolkit and want to test it in my-flashy-app before publishing, you might tweak my-flashy-app's elm.json to include

"locations": {
    "me/my-fancy-gui-toolkit": {
        "method": "file",
        "path": "../my-fancy-gui-toolkit"
    }
}

git

Parameters: url as a git url, ref as a branch/tag/commit (defaults to version).

Checks out the given reference from the given git repository.

E.g., to build your application against the upstream development version of elm/time,

"locations": {
    "elm/time": {
        "method": "git",
        "url": "https://github.com/elm/time.git",
        "ref": "master"
    }
}

The elm tool error messages are explicitly unhelpful if something goes wrong compiling dependencies. If you get some complaints about corruption or version conflicts, chances are that shelm or your elm.json setup is at fault. Wiping elm-stuff and calling shelm fetch again is a good first try.

It's important that both elm make and elm make --docs=docs.json works for each dependency.

It's your responsibility to make sure that the source archive pointed at by a location actually has the same version as listed in the dependencies. Things are likely to go wrong if those don't align.

Elm compiler

The elm tool should be in the path. Versions 0.19.0 and 0.19.1 are supported.

jq

The jq JSON processor is used to read elm.json.

curl, git, tar

git is required for the "git" location method, curl and tar for the default "github" archive method.

shelm manages its own local copy of the Elm package database in elm-stuff/home/.elm, by downloading source archives using a variety of measures, and generating a matching package registry. It calls elm with $HOME pointed at this directory and networking disabled by setting an invalid $HTTP_PROXY variable.

The following two articles go into this with a bit more detail:

• https://vllmrt.net/spam/guix-elm-2.html describes a Guix build system for Elm applications that uses the same techniques.
• https://vllmrt.net/spam/subverting-elm.html shows how shelm came about when figuring out how to build an Elm app with native code.