Introduction

       The  Elvish Package Manager (epm) is a module bundled with Elvish for managing third-party
       packages.

       In Elvish terminology, a module is a .elv file that can be imported with the use  command,
       while a package is a collection of modules that are usually kept in the same repository as
       one coherent project and may have interdependencies.   The  Elvish  language  itself  only
       deals with modules; the concept of package is a matter of how to organize modules.

       Like  the  go  command, Elvish does not have a central registry of packages.  A package is
       simply identified by the URL of its  code  repository,  e.g.   github.com/elves/sample-pkg
       (https://github.com/elves/sample-pkg).   To  install  the  package,  one  simply  uses the
       following:

              use epm
              epm:install github.com/elves/sample-pkg

       epm knows out-of-the-box how to manage packages hosted in GitHub,  BitBucket  and  GitLab,
       and  requires  the  git  command to be available.  It can also copy files via git or rsync
       from arbitrary locations (see Custom package domains for details).

       Once installed, modules in this package can be imported with use  github.com/elves/sample-
       pkg/....   This package has a module named sample-mod containing a function sample-fn, and
       can be used like this:

              ~> use github.com/elves/sample-pkg/sample-mod
              ~> sample-mod:sample-fn
              This is a sample function in a sample module in a sample package

The epm-managed directory
       Elvish searches for modules in multiple directories, and epm only manages one of them:

       • On UNIX, epm manages $XDG_DATA_HOME/elvish/lib, defaulting to  ~/.local/share/elvish/lib
         if $XDG_DATA_HOME is unset or empty;

       • On Windows, epm manages %LocalAppData%\elvish\lib.

       This  directory  is  called  the  epm-managed  directory,  and  its  path  is available as
       $epm:managed-dir.

Custom package domains

       Package names in epm have the following structure: domain/path.  The domain is usually the
       hostname  from  where the package is to be fetched, such as github.com.  The path can have
       one or more components separated by slashes.   Usually,  the  full  name  of  the  package
       corresponds with the URL from where it can be fetched.  For example, the package hosted at
       <https://github.com/elves/sample-pkg> is identified as github.com/elves/sample-pkg.

       Packages are stored under the epm-managed directory in a path  identical  to  their  name.
       For    example,    the    package    mentioned    above   is   stored   at   $epm:managed-
       dir/github.com/elves/sample-pkg.

       Each domain must be configured with the following information:

       • The method to use to fetch packages from the domain.  The two supported methods are  git
         and rsync.

       • The  number  of  directory  levels  under the domain directory in which the packages are
         found.  For example, for github.com the number of levels is 2, since package paths  have
         two  levels  (e.g.   elves/sample-pkg).   All packages from a given domain have the same
         number of levels.

       • Depending on the method, other attributes are needed:

         • git needs a protocol attribute, which can be https or http, and determines how the URL
           is constructed.

         • rsync needs a location attribute, which must be a valid source directory recognized by
           the rsync command.

       epm includes default domain configurations for github.com, gitlab.com  and  bitbucket.org.
       These three domains share the same configuration:

              {
                  "method": "git",
                  "protocol": "https",
                  "levels": "2"
              }

       You  can define your own domain by creating a file named epm-domain.cfg in the appropriate
       directory under $epm:managed-dir.  For example, if you want to define an elvish-dev domain
       which  installs packages from your local ~/dev/elvish/ directory, you must create the file
       $epm:managed-dir/elvish-dev/epm-domain.cfg with the following JSON content:

              {
                  "method": "rsync",
                  "location": "~/dev/elvish",
                  "levels": "1"
              }

       You can then install any directory under ~/dev/elvish/ as a package.  For example, if  you
       have  a  directory  ~/dev/elvish/utilities/,  the  following command will install it under
       $epm:managed-dir/elvish-dev/utilities:

              epm:install elvish-dev/utilities

       When you make any changes to your source directory,  epm:upgrade  will  synchronize  those
       changes to $epm:managed-dir.

Variables

   $epm:managed-dir {#epm:managed-dir}
       The path of the epm-managed directory.

Functions

   epm:install {#epm:install}
              epm:install &silent-if-installed=$false $pkg...

       Install the named packages.  By default, if a package is already installed, a message will
       be shown.  This can be disabled by passing &silent-if-installed=$true,  so  that  already-
       installed packages are silently ignored.

   epm:installed {#epm:installed}
              epm:installed

       Return  an  array  with  all  installed  packages.   epm:list  can be used as an alias for
       epm:installed.

   epm:is-installed {#epm:is-installed}
              epm:is-installed $pkg

       Returns a boolean value indicating whether the given package is installed.

   epm:metadata {#epm:metadata}
              epm:metadata $pkg

       Returns a hash containing the metadata for the given  package.   Metadata  for  a  package
       includes the following base attributes:

       • name: name of the package

       • installed: a boolean indicating whether the package is currently installed

       • method: method by which it was installed (git or rsync)

       • src: source URL of the package

       • dst: where the package is (or would be) installed.  Note that this attribute is returned
         even if installed is $false.

       Additionally,  packages  can  define  arbitrary  metadata  attributes  in  a  file  called
       metadata.json in their top directory.  The following attributes are recommended:

       • description: a human-readable description of the package

       • maintainers: an array containing the package maintainers, in Name <email> format.

       • homepage: URL of the homepage for the package, if it has one.

       • dependencies: an array listing dependencies of the current package.  Any packages listed
         will be installed automatically by epm:install if they are not yet installed.

   epm:query {#epm:query}
              epm:query $pkg

       Pretty print the available metadata of the given package.

   epm:uninstall {#epm:uninstall}
              epm:uninstall $pkg...

       Uninstall named packages.

   epm:upgrade {#epm:upgrade}
              epm:upgrade $pkg...

       Upgrade named packages.  If no package name is given, upgrade all installed packages.