Reef and packages

Reef manages Chelis project dependencies. The compiler-bundled chelis-std runtime is available automatically; other libraries are declared in a project's reef.toml.

Start a project with a library

Create a project with reef init, then add the library you need under [dependencies] in its reef.toml:

chelis reef init demo --module-prefix Demo --output demo
cd demo

[dependencies]
nautilus = { version = "0.7.48" }

Shell releases pin an exact Chelis compiler version. The compiler pin in your project must match the version required by the shell release; Reef rejects a mismatch. For example, Nautilus 0.7.48 uses Chelis 0.18.13. Set the generated compiler field in reef.toml to "=0.18.13", then prepare and build the project:

chelis reef setup
chelis reef build

Reef installs the pinned compiler, downloads the declared library from its release, and resolves its dependencies. It records the selected versions in reef.lock. You do not need to check out the source repository of Nautilus or its dependencies to use them. Add other published libraries your project imports to the same [dependencies] table, using versions compatible with the project's compiler pin.

Set up an existing project

For a project that already has a reef.toml and reef.lock, provision its pinned compiler and locked packages, then build:

chelis reef setup
chelis reef build

reef setup uses the project's lockfile to retrieve its dependencies. This is the usual way to prepare an application such as hello-chelis on another machine. Clone that application to access its example programs; Reef downloads the libraries it depends on separately.

Create a package

To start a new library or application, use reef init:

chelis reef init demo --module-prefix Demo --output demo
cd demo
chelis reef build

The command creates a reef.toml manifest and a starter module under src/. The module name follows the manifest's module_prefix and its path. For example, src/nn/linear.ch in this project uses a module name under Demo.Nn.Linear.

About bulk shell installation

chelis reef install --bootstrap downloads a predefined set of commonly used shells. It is not a complete list of every published library. For application development, declare the libraries your program uses in reef.toml; Reef then fetches that dependency set and its transitive dependencies, pinned by reef.lock.

To inspect or change a library's implementation, clone that library's source repository. A source checkout is not needed to consume its Reef release.