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About Tatin

Tatin is the community cross-platform package manager for Dyalog APL

Tatin overview

The diagram illustrates an APL application defined in Linked text files, and held on a GitHub repository. It depends on APL libraries in the form of Tatin packages imported from a Tatin repository.

In the example, the application does not just consume Tatin packages. Its working parts, excluding the tests but including the dependencies, are also published as a new Tatin package.

As shown, one package may depend on another, and so on. Tatin manages these dependencies.

The Tatin Principal Registry hosts packages with minimal licence restrictions. You can also host a Tatin registry on your local machine or on a server.

Packages

A package should serve a particular, limited task, for example converting Markdown files into HTML.

It may be as simple as a single source file, or multiple folders and source files.

It may include other assets: CSS files, BAT files, icons, images, config files, documentation, DLLs, etc.

It may depend on other packages: Tatin manages the dependencies behind the scenes.

Tatin package licences impose few restrictions on your use of the software.

Versions and dependencies

All things must change. In general a package exists as a series of versions.

A package that depends on another package usually depends on either a specific or a minimum version of it. Upgrading might require newer versions of packages on which it in turn depends.

Tatin follows the semantic versioning conventions and silently manages all this for you.

To support this work the Principal Registry never deletes a published package. You can deprecate a package or a version, but the registry retains it for anyone who relies on it.

Usage

There are two ways to use Tatin.

  • User commands such as ]TATIN.ListRegistries put Tatin at your fingertips
  • API functions such as ⎕SE.Tatin.ListRegistries let you write DevOps scripts

Requirements

  • Dyalog Unicode Edition Version 18.2 or better. (Classic is not supported.)
  • Link Version 3.0.8 or better
  • The Tatin client runs on Windows, Linux, macOS and Raspberry Pi.
  • The Tatin registry runs on Windows (as a service or a Docker container) and on Linux (as a Docker container)2.

Licences

Tatin is a community project. Packages hosted on the Principal Registry make the software available with minimal restrictions.

Community

You can contribute to the Principal Registry: report errors (open issues in the package repositories), or submit pull requests if you can see how to fix them.

Please also consider publishing your own work as Tatin packages.

Besides the Principal Registry, you can host your own Tatin registry.

Tatin is itself a community project, hosted on GitHub. No one owns it. You are very welcome to contribute to it.

Cider and Tatin

Cider is the project manager for Dyalog APL.

Like Tatin, it works with APL source files created and managed by Link.

Tatin is all you need in order to consume packages. Cider extends Tatin with tools for managing versions and tests.

If you foresee publishing software for others to use, either as Tatin packages or as an application or Web service, it might suit you to start with Cider and let it manage Tatin.

  1. A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. — Wikipedia ↩

  2. The registry should also run under Docker on macOS but this has not been tested. ↩