Peru is a tool for including other people's code in your projects. It fetches from anywhere -- git, hg, svn, tarballs -- and puts files wherever you like. Peru helps you track exact versions of your dependencies, so that your history is always reproducible. And it fits inside your scripts and Makefiles, so your build stays simple and foolproof.
If you build with make
, you don't have to do anything special when you
switch branches or pull new commits. Build tools notice those changes
without any help. But if you depend on other people's code, the tools
aren't so automatic anymore. You need to remember when to git submodule update
or go get -u
or pip install -r
. If you forget a step you can
break your build, or worse, you might build something wrong without
noticing.
Peru wants you to automate dependency management just like you automate the rest of your build. It doesn't interfere with your source control or install anything global, so you can just throw it in at the start of a script and forget about it. It'll run every time, and your dependencies will never be out of sync. Simple, and fast as heck.
The name "peru", along with our love for reproducible builds, was inspired by Amazon's Brazil build system. It also happens to be an anagram for "reup".
Peru supports Linux, macOS, and Windows. It requires:
python
3.8 or latergit
, any versionhg
, any versionsvn
, any versiongit
is required even if you are not retrieving a git-based module because
Peru uses it internally.
pip
Use pip to install it:
pip install peru
Note that depending on how Python is set up on your machine, you might
need to use sudo
with that, and Python 3's pip might be called pip3
.
On Arch Linux, you can install peru
from the
AUR.
Homebrew has a Peru formula for macOS
and Linux. brew install peru
will install it running on the latest Python
version that Homebrew supports.
Here's the peru version of the first git submodules
example
from the Git Book. We're going to add the Rack
library to our project. First, create a peru.yaml
file like this:
imports:
rack_example: rack/ # This is where we want peru to put the module.
git module rack_example:
url: git://github.com/chneukirchen/rack.git
Now run peru sync
.
Peru cloned Rack for you, and imported a copy of it under the rack
directory.
It also created a magical directory called .peru
to hold that clone and some
other business. If you're using source control, now would be a good time to put
these directories in your ignore list (like .gitignore
). You usually don't
want to check them in.
Running peru clean
will make the imported directory disappear. Running peru sync
again will make it come back, and it'll be a lot faster this time,
because peru caches everything.
For a more involved example, let's use peru to manage some dotfiles. We're big
fans of the Solarized colorscheme, and
we want to get it working in both ls
and vim
. For ls
all we need peru to
do is fetch a Solarized dircolors file. (That'll get loaded somewhere like
.bashrc
, not included in this example.) For vim
we're going to need the
Solarized vim plugin,
and we also want Pathogen, which makes
plugin installation much cleaner. Here's the peru.yaml
:
imports:
# The dircolors file just goes at the root of our project.
dircolors: ./
# We're going to merge Pathogen's autoload directory into our own.
pathogen: .vim/autoload/
# The Solarized plugin gets its own directory, where Pathogen expects it.
vim-solarized: .vim/bundle/solarized/
git module dircolors:
url: https://github.com/seebi/dircolors-solarized
# Only copy this file. Can be a list of files. Accepts * and ** globs.
pick: dircolors.ansi-dark
curl module pathogen:
url: https://codeload.github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen/tar.gz/v2.3
# Untar the archive after fetching.
unpack: tar
# After the unpack, use this subdirectory as the root of the module.
export: vim-pathogen-2.3/autoload/
git module vim-solarized:
url: https://github.com/altercation/vim-colors-solarized
# Fetch this exact commit, instead of master or main.
rev: 7a7e5c8818d717084730133ed6b84a3ffc9d0447
The contents of the dircolors
module are copied to the root of our repo. The
pick
field restricts this to just one file, dircolors.ansi-dark
.
The pathogen
module uses the curl
type instead of git
, and its URL points
to a tarball. (This is for the sake of an example. In real life you'd probably
use git
here too.) The unpack
field means that we get the contents of the
tarball rather than the tarball file itself. Because the module specifies an
export
directory, it's that directory rather than the whole module that gets
copied to the import path, .vim/autoload
. The result is that Pathogen's
autoload
directory gets merged with our own, which is the standard way to
install Pathogen.
The vim-solarized
module gets copied into its own directory under bundle
,
which is where Pathogen will look for it. Note that it has an explicit rev
field, which tells peru to fetch that exact revision, rather than the default
branch (master
or main
in git). That's a Super Serious Best Practice™,
because it means your dependencies will always be consistent, even when you
look at commits from a long time ago.
You really want all of your dependencies to have hashes, but editing those by hand is painful. The next section is about making that easier.
If you run peru reup
, peru will talk to each of your upstream repos, get
their latest versions, and then edit your peru.yaml
file with any updates. If
you don't have peru.yaml
checked into some kind of source control, you should
probably do that first, because the reup will modify it in place. When we reup
the example above, the changes look something like this:
diff --git a/peru.yaml b/peru.yaml
index 15c758d..7f0e26b 100644
--- a/peru.yaml
+++ b/peru.yaml
@@ -6,12 +6,14 @@ imports:
git module dircolors:
url: https://github.com/seebi/dircolors-solarized
pick: dircolors.ansi-dark
+ rev: a5e130c642e45323a22226f331cb60fd37ce564f
curl module pathogen:
url: https://codeload.github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen/tar.gz/v2.3
unpack: tar
export: vim-pathogen-2.3/autoload/
+ sha1: 9c3fd6d9891bfe2cd3ed3ddc9ffe5f3fccb72b6a
git module vim-solarized:
url: https://github.com/altercation/vim-colors-solarized
- rev: 7a7e5c8818d717084730133ed6b84a3ffc9d0447
+ rev: 528a59f26d12278698bb946f8fb82a63711eec21
Peru made three changes:
dircolors
module, which didn't have a rev
before, just got one. By
default for git
, this is the current master
or main
. To change that,
you can set the reup
field to the name of a different branch.pathogen
module got a sha1
field. Unlike git
, a curl
module is
plain old HTTP, so it's stuck downloading whatever file is at the url
. But
it will check this hash after the download is finished, and it will raise an
error if there's a mismatch.vim-solarized
module had a hash before, but it's been updated. Again,
the new value comes from master
or main
by default.At this point, you'll probably want to make a new commit of peru.yaml
to
record the version bumps. You can do this every so often to keep your plugins
up to date, and you'll always be able to reach old versions in your history.
sync
sync
yells at you instead of overwriting existing
or modified files. Use --force
/-f
to tell it you're serious.clean
--force
/-f
flag as sync
.reup
git
, hg
, and
svn
, this updates the rev
field. For curl
, this sets the sha1
field. You can optionally give specific module names as arguments.copy
override
peru.yaml
.For cloning repos. These types all provide the same fields:
url
: required, any protocol supported by the underlying VCSrev
: optional, the specific revision/branch/tag to fetchreup
: optional, the branch/tag to get the latest rev from when running
peru reup
The git
type also supports setting submodules: false
to skip
fetching git submodules. Otherwise they're included by default.
For downloading a file from a URL. This type is powered by Pythons's standard library, rather than an external program.
url
: required, any kind supported by urllib
(HTTP, FTP, file://
)filename
: optional, overrides the default filenamesha1
: optional, checks that the downloaded file matches the checksumunpack
: optional, tar
or zip
Peru includes a few other types mostly for testing purposes. See rsync
for an
example implemented in Bash.
Module type plugins are as-dumb-as-possible scripts that only know how to sync, and optionally reup. Peru shells out to them and then handles most of the caching magic itself, though plugins can also do their own caching as appropriate. For example, the git and hg plugins keep track of repos they clone. Peru itself doesn't need to know how to do that. For all the details, see Architecture: Plugins.
Some fields (like rev
and unpack
) are specific to certain module
types. There are also fields you can use in any module, which modify the
tree of files after it's fetched. Some of these made an appearance in
the fancy example above:
copy
: A map or multimap of source and destination paths to copy.
Works like cp
on the command line, so if the destination is a
directory, it'll preserve the source filename and copy into the
destination directory.move
: A map or multimap of source and destination paths to move.
Similar to copy
above, but removes the source.drop
: A file or directory, or a list of files and directories, to
remove from the module. Paths can contain *
or **
globs.pick
: A file or directory, or a list of files and directories, to
include in the module. Everything else is dropped. Paths can contain
*
or **
globs.executable
: A file or list of files to make executable, as if
calling chmod +x
. Also accepts globs.export
: A subdirectory that peru should treat as the root of the
module tree. Everything else is dropped, including parent directories.Note that these fields always take effect in the order listed above, regardless
of the order they're given in peru.yaml
. For example, a move
is always
performed before a pick
. Also note that these fields can't be given twice.
For example, instead of using two separate move
fields (one of which would be
ignored), use a single move
field containing multiple moves. In practice,
things work this way because these fields are parsed as keys in a dictionary,
which don't preserve ordering and can't repeat.
Besides using those fields in your modules, you can also use them in "named
rules", which let you transform one module in multiple ways. For example, say
you want the asyncio
subdir from the Tulip project, but you also want the
license file somewhere else. Rather than defining the same module twice, you
can use one module and two named rules, like this:
imports:
tulip|asyncio: python/asyncio/
tulip|license: licenses/
git module tulip:
url: https://github.com/python/asyncio
rule asyncio:
export: asyncio/
rule license:
pick: COPYING
As in this example, named rules are declared a lot like modules and then
used in the imports
list, with the syntax module|rule
. The |
operator there works kind of like a shell pipeline, so you can even do
twisted things like module|rule1|rule2
, with each rule applying to the
output tree of the previous.
If you import a module that has a peru file of its own, peru can include
that module's imports along with it, similar to how git submodules
behave with git clone --recursive
. To enable this, add recursive: true
in a module's definition.
It's also possible to directly import modules that are defined in the
peru.yaml
file of another module. If your project defines a module
foo
, and foo
has a peru file in it that defines a module bar
, you
can use foo.bar
in your own imports. This works even if you never
actually import foo
, and it does not require setting recursive: true
.
There are several flags and environment variables you can set, to control where peru puts things. Flags always take precedence.
--file=<file>
: The path to your peru YAML file. By default peru
looks for peru.yaml
in the current directory or one of its parents.
This setting tells peru to use a specific file. If set, --sync-dir
must also be set.--sync-dir=<dir>
: The path that all imports
are interpreted
relative to. That is, if you import a module to ./
, the contents of
that module go directly in the sync dir. By default this is the
directory containing your peru.yaml
file. If set, --file
must also
be set.--state-dir=<dir>
: The directory where peru stashes all of its state
metadata, and also the parent of the cache dir. By default this is
.peru
inside the sync dir. You should not share this directory
between two projects, or peru sync
will get confused.--cache-dir=<dir>
or PERU_CACHE_DIR
: The directory where peru
keeps everything it's fetched. If you have many projects fetching the
same dependencies, you can use a shared cache dir to speed things up.--file-basename=<name>
: Change the default peru file name (normally
peru.yaml
). As usual, peru will search the current directory and its
parents for a file of that name, and it will use that file's parent
dir as the sync dir. Incompatible with --file
.