Working with Packages¶

The source code for the Mafia game and IRC bot are in their own git repository, https://github.com/monte-language/mt-mafia . Let’s download and run it:

git clone https://github.com/monte-language/mt-mafia
cd mt-mafia
monte test mafiabot
monte run mafiabot chat.freenode.net

This should result in the bot connecting to IRC and being ready to receive commands.

Monte packages are defined by a file in the project root directory named mt.json. This file includes package metadata and a list of dependencies. Previous to the first run, a Nix package is built from the project and its dependencies (currently these can either be from a local directory or a Git repository). The monte test command collects all unit tests in the project and starts the test runner, whereas monte run invokes the main function in mafiabot.mt. (The build step can be invoked directly using monte build.)

The format for mt.json is a JSON file with the following keys:

name: A name for the package.
paths: A list of paths relative to the project root that contain Monte code. ”.” is acceptable if it’s in the root.
entrypoint: The name of the module with the main function to invoke. Optional.
dependencies: An object with package names as keys and dependency descriptions as values. Dependency descriptions are objects with url keys naming a location to fetch the dependency from, and optionally type (either “git” or “local” – defaults to git if omitted) and commit (describing the git revision to fetch) keys.

Building the Nix package involves first creating an mt-lock.json file with a full list of all dependencies and their versions. You may keep this file to pin your builds to specific versions or get rid of it to re-run the dependency discovery process.