nimble lock: causes Nim to no longer find packages

[ee7]

Short example

$ nim c src/foo.nim # success, where `foo.nim` contains `import jsony`
$ nimble lock
$ nim c src/foo.nim

Current output

/tmp/foo/src/foo.nim(1, 8) Error: cannot open file: jsony

Expected output

No error. I thought that Nim would just ensure that it uses the package versions from the nimble.lock file.

Discussion

Is this intended? I am aware of https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/commit/7c6dcfd968867ec9b2fee5ca3ef8f251a6faa350 and https://github.com/nim-lang/nimble/issues/1004.

Is the intention that after running nimble lock:

• a project should only run nimble commands, and never nim commands?
• project must manually add some paths in a project config file?

The same error also breaks e.g. nimble test, if you redefine the test task for performance like:

task test, "Run all the tests":
  exec "nim r tests/all_tests.nim"

NIMBLE_DIR is not set.

Nim version

Nim Compiler Version 2.0.0 [Linux: amd64]
Compiled at 2023-08-01
Copyright (c) 2006-2023 by Andreas Rumpf

git hash: a488067a4130f029000be4550a0fb1b39e0e9e7c
active boot switches: -d:release

---

Long example

nimble lock produces an error if the project is not under version control. So please excuse the boilerplate below - I've tried to make a clear, robust reproduction.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -ex

# Create nimble project
cd /tmp
rm -rf /tmp/foo
mkdir -p foo
cd foo
nimble --silent -y init
git init
# Make `git commit` work even if there's no global git user.name or user.email
git config user.name "Foo"              # Does not alter global settings
git config user.email "foo@example.org" # Does not alter global settings
git add .
git commit --quiet -m 'initial commit'

# Add jsony dependency
rm src/foo.nim
echo 'import jsony' > src/foo.nim
nimble install jsony
nim c src/foo.nim                       # Success, before running `nimble lock`
echo 'requires "jsony"' >> foo.nimble
nimble path jsony                       # Prints the absolute path of the installed jsony

# Add lock file
nimble lock
git add .
git commit --quiet -m 'another commit'  # Show that committing the lock file doesn't prevent the error 
nim c src/foo.nim                       # Error

So we have the foo.nimble file:

# Package

version       = "0.1.0"
author        = "Anonymous"
description   = "A new awesome nimble package"
license       = "MIT"
srcDir        = "src"

# Dependencies

requires "nim >= 2.0.0"
requires "jsony"

and the nimble.lock file:

{
  "version": 2,
  "packages": {
    "jsony": {
      "version": "1.1.5",
      "vcsRevision": "ea811bec7fa50f5abd3088ba94cda74285e93f18",
      "url": "https://github.com/treeform/jsony",
      "downloadMethod": "git",
      "dependencies": [],
      "checksums": {
        "sha1": "6aeb83e7481ca8686396a568096054bc668294df"
      }
    }
  },
  "tasks": {}
}

Current output

[...]
$ nim c src/foo.nim
Hint: used config file '/home/ee7/.choosenim/toolchains/nim-2.0.0/config/nim.cfg' [Conf]
Hint: used config file '/home/ee7/.choosenim/toolchains/nim-2.0.0/config/config.nims' [Conf]
Hint: used config file '/home/ee7/.config/nim/nim.cfg' [Conf]
........................................................................................................
/tmp/foo/src/foo.nim(1, 8) Warning: imported and not used: 'jsony' [UnusedImport]
51405 lines; 1.177s; 71.148MiB peakmem; proj: /tmp/foo/src/foo.nim; out: /tmp/foo/src/foo.out [SuccessX]
$ echo 'requires "jsony"' >> foo.nimble
$ nimble path jsony
/home/ee7/.nimble/pkgs2/jsony-1.1.5-6aeb83e7481ca8686396a568096054bc668294df
$ nimble lock
     Info:  Generating the lock file...
  Verifying dependencies for foo@0.1.0
     Info:  Dependency on jsony@any version already satisfied
  Verifying dependencies for jsony@1.1.5
  Success:  The lock file is generated.
$ git add .
$ git commit --quiet -m 'another commit'
$ nim c src/foo.nim
Hint: used config file '/home/ee7/.choosenim/toolchains/nim-2.0.0/config/nim.cfg' [Conf]
Hint: used config file '/home/ee7/.choosenim/toolchains/nim-2.0.0/config/config.nims' [Conf]
Hint: used config file '/home/ee7/.config/nim/nim.cfg' [Conf]
......................................................................
/tmp/foo/src/foo.nim(1, 8) Error: cannot open file: jsony

Expected output

No error at the end.

[Clonkk]

Try nimble setup after running nimble lock

[ee7]

@Clonkk Thanks. That's what I was missing. It was apparently hard for me to discover.

So I guess it's intended that nimble lockdoesn't automatically do the nimble setup stuff? If so, someone please close this.

But I'd suggest that we could:

1. Mention nimble setup in the nimble lock section of the nimble docs
2. Consider adding "you might want to run nimble setup" to the output of nimble lock

[arnetheduck]

Is this intended?

in general, locking means that you want some particular dependencies and only those dependencies - otherwise, random stuff from random nimble PATH:s can interfere with import.

That said, seems reasonable that lock should imply setup, though this would be a reasonable issue to raise in https://github.com/nim-lang/nimble/ instead

cc @yyoncho -