fetchdep

Overview

The fetchdep utility provides an easy way for developers to fetch dependencies for software projects that work under a container path. If a project contains a fetchdep configuration at its root, a user can invoke fetchdep to automatically download sources alongside the working path of a project. This can be useful for projects which may not have package management capabilities.

The following version control systems are supported: CVS, Git, Mercurial, SVN.

Requirements

• Python 2.7 or 3.5+
• PyYAML
• (optional) CVS
• (optional) Git
• (optional) Mercurial
• (optional) SVN

Installation

This tool can be installed using pip:

pip install fetchdep
 (or)
python -m pip install fetchdep

Usage

This tool can be invoked from a command line using:

fetchdep --help
 (or)
python -m fetchdep --help

Examples

Consider a project that is cloned in the following path:

└── ~/workdir
    └── my-awesome-project/
        └── fetchdep.yml

If a user is working inside the project directory and invokes fetchdep:

$ cd workdir/my-awesome-project
$ fetchdep

This can automatically clone dependencies alongside the project as follows:

└── ~/workdir
    ├── my-awesome-library-a/
    |   └── ...
    ├── my-awesome-library-b/
    |   └── ...
    ├── my-awesome-library-c/
    |   └── ...
    └── my-awesome-project/
        └── fetchdep.yml

Configuration

A fetchdep configuration file can be named either one of the following:

• fetchdep.yml
• .fetchdep.yml
• .fetchdep

Configuration files are YAML defined configurations. Each configuration is expected to have a root fetchdep list, which holds one or more dependencies to be fetched. For example:

fetchdep:
  # cvs
  - name: my-module-a
    site: :pserver:anonymous@cvs.example.org:/cvsroot/my-module-a my-module-a
  # git
  - name: my-module-b
    site: https://example.com/myteam/my-module-b.git
  # hg
  - name: my-module-c
    site: hg+https://www.example.org/repo/my-module-c
  # svn
  - name: my-module-d
    site: svn+https://svn.code.example.com/c/myteam/my-module-d/trunk

• Each entry must have a name, which will be used for the folder name to checkout sources to.
• Each entry must also have a site, defining what type of source will be fetched. Accepted site prefixes include cvs+, git+, hg+ and svn+. Although, some sites may omit the prefix if this utility can determine what type of sources are being fetched.

Capabilities

Tags

This utility supports tagged dependencies. A project can define one or more tags for a project. For example:

fetchdep:
  - name: my-test-module
    site: https://example.com/myteam/my-test-module.git
    tags:
      - test

By default, if a user invokes fetchdep with no other arguments, the my-test-module module above will not be fetched. To include sources which have a tag assigned, the tag must be added to the command line:

fetchdep --tag test

Multiple tags can be added by repeating the --tag argument. Users can also use the --all-tags argument to fetch every dependency.

Recursive

The fetchdep utility will fetch only the current project's defined dependencies. If a project dependency defines their own fetchdep configuration, additional dependencies will not be fetched by default.

To support downloading a project's dependency's dependencies, the --recursive option can be used:

fetchdep --recursive

Fetching too many projects may cause fetchdep to prompt to continue. This can be overridden using the -y argument.

Dry-run

Users can always invoke with the --dry-run argument to inspect which dependencies will be fetched without invoking a fetch operation.