Ian McLerran (May 29 2024 at 04:23): Ian McLerran (May 29 2024 at 04:23):Hey all! I created a CLI tool for starting new roc apps. This tool allows you to specify the platform and packages you want to use, and roc-start will generate a .roc file for you with the latest releases of the packages and platforms you specified.
Lots of room for improvement, like possibly using Hasnep/roc-packages for the backend, generating package headers as well as apps, or allowing specifying a specific version of a platform or package, but I think its already pretty useful as is.
There are two workflows:
Include the application name, platform, and packages as CLI args:
roc-start my-app basic-cli weaver jsonProvide or edit a configuration file:
roc-start config -dconfig allows you to specify a pre-existing config file, or launch an editor to edit a template configuration Hannes (May 29 2024 at 04:45):I'm embarrassed to say that having used Roc for over a year I still have to copy and paste an app header from another project every single time :sweat_smile: This will be very useful!
Ian McLerran (May 29 2024 at 05:55):Haha, yep! Right there with ya… :sweat_smile: I finally got fed up!
Kiryl Dziamura (May 29 2024 at 06:43):Ha, it looks very similar to the concept @Luke Boswell proposed here: https://roc.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/304641-ideas/topic/roc.20init.20app.20scaffolding
Luke Boswell (May 29 2024 at 06:50):I'm very happy to see this exist :heart: . It will make it so much easier to get started with new apps.
As a tool I think this will be much easier for us to upgrade and innovate. I'm guessing long term we will still want it integrated for a "batteries included" experience??
One of the ideas I was proposing is that platform authors can provide a plugin or script to scaffold out an app structure. I figured it could support more complicated things than a single main.roc file which may be helpful, but I'm not sure about.
I'd be interested to know @Ian McLerran if you have any thoughts?
Ian McLerran (May 29 2024 at 16:23):Wow, yeah, thanks for calling this out @Kiryl Dziamura… my CLI app here is definitely a rudimentary implementation of the roc init proposal. @Luke Boswell, I really like the design you have proposed for how the cli app could function.
A few thoughts:
1) The init.roc script solves a major shortcoming of my roc-start tool - namely the ability generate any code after the header. Since each platform can have a different API, roc-start doesn’t even attempt to generate the interface for the platform, let alone any other files. It also provides a way for the platform to have its own opinion on what its alias should be, rather than having to store that info in the repository, which is what roc-start does.
2) roc start provides one functionality not currently included in the roc init proposal. This of course is fetching package urls and including them in code gen in addition to the platform. I really like this functionality, but the tradeoff for more complete code gen targeting the platform may be worth it. It would also not be prohibitive for roc init to insert package urls into the code generated by the init.roc script. The issue of an alias for each package would still need to be solved though.
3) The proposal for roc init takes a fairly different approach to project initialization from roc-start, but I am totally down to adapt my project to follow the proposed design. Sounds like a fun project!
Luke Boswell (May 29 2024 at 23:29):I really like the addition of packages. It would be cool to include that in the roc init design somehow.
Ian McLerran (Jun 03 2024 at 14:22):Coming soon [TM]... :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
Screenshot-2024-06-03-at-09.18.22.png
Ian McLerran (Jun 03 2024 at 20:28):Okay, TUI app is live! Use with: roc-start tui
New features:
Deprecated:
Ian McLerran (Jun 04 2024 at 16:03):Quick note: I introduced a bug around 9pm CDT last night which shows blank input options in the bottom-bar by pushing to main when I should have been on a feature branch. Should have the fix live in the next hour... :rolling_eyes::sweat_smile:
Ian McLerran (Jun 04 2024 at 16:21):Okay, bugs should be resolved. Shouldn't impact functionality, but I'd recommend making sure you're on roc-start --version >= v0.2.1 for the best experience.
Hannes (Jun 04 2024 at 23:08):Lesson learnt: enable main branch protection on all my repos! :sweat_smile:
Ian McLerran (Jun 05 2024 at 01:01):Haha yeah no kidding!
Ian McLerran (Jun 07 2024 at 00:47):A couple updates to roc-start:
1) Now correctly generates headers for platforms which require something besides just “main”, IE kingfisher requires [main, Model].
2) Scaffolds a basic app for 3/4 platforms currently listed (using “app stubs”).
To get these updates, make sure you have roc-start v0.3.3. If you have app stubs (v0.3.0+), but not the kingfisher stub, run with the -u flag. Starting with v0.3.4 you can also run roc-start update -s to update the app stubs, without requiring other valid command line args (tui or appName platform).
Ian McLerran (Jun 11 2024 at 17:49):Three new packages available from roc-start:
To get the latest packages, run roc-start update --packages (on roc-start v0.3.4+), or roc-start -u tui, on any* version.
Luke Boswell (Jun 28 2024 at 01:24):I'm having trouble using roc-start.
I cloned the repository. Built the app using roc build src/main.roc --output roc-start. Sym-linked it into /usr/local/bin. I can run roc-start update which gives me three green ticks for updating its repositories.
But, when I go to use the app I have Nil repositories loaded.
11:22:48 ~/Documents/GitHub/roc pr6733 $ roc-start update
Updating platform repository... ✔
Updating package repository... ✔
Updating app-stubs... ✔
Screenshot-2024-06-28-at-11.24.01.png
Am I missing something?
Ian McLerran (Jun 28 2024 at 22:13):What’s the output for ls -la ~/.roc-start?
Luke Boswell (Jun 28 2024 at 22:37):$ ls -al ~/.roc-start
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 5 luke staff 160 28 Jun 11:19 .
drwxr-x---+ 90 luke staff 2880 29 Jun 08:37 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 luke staff 64 28 Jun 11:19 app-stubs
-rw-r--r-- 1 luke staff 3 28 Jun 11:25 pf-data.rvn
-rw-r--r-- 1 luke staff 3 28 Jun 11:25 pkg-data.rvn
$ cat ~/.roc-start/pkg-data.rvn
[
]
And pf-data.rvn? That is offending screenshot referring to
Zeljko Nesic (Jun 28 2024 at 22:46):oh 3 bytes, nvm ^^
Ian McLerran (Jun 29 2024 at 02:24):Hmm… what about roc-start —version I thought I had kept my changes to the repo non-breaking for older versions of the app, but that would be my next question…
Ian McLerran (Jun 29 2024 at 02:38):Okay, looks like I need to handle network failures when downloading updates. If the network fails, you’ll end up with empty rvn files. I’m not able to do much over the weekend here to fix that, but is there any chance that you didn’t have internet access when running roc-start update?
Ian McLerran (Jun 29 2024 at 02:39):Sunday I’ll try to get out an update which lets you know if updates fail, and avoid overwriting an existing cache if that happens.
Luke Boswell (Jun 29 2024 at 02:54):$ roc-start -V
v0.3.4
I DM'd you copies of the .rvn files just as a quick fix.
Luke Boswell (Jun 29 2024 at 02:55):I can run the update now and it is still empty
Ian McLerran (Jun 29 2024 at 02:59):Do you have the github cli installed and authenticated?
Luke Boswell (Jun 29 2024 at 02:59):I think so. Like this?
$ git --version
git version 2.45.2
I just did
$ brew install gh
[removed this bit of homebrew installing gh]
13:00:16 ~/.roc-start $ roc-start update
Updating platform repository... ✔
Updating package repository... ✔
Updating app-stubs... ✔
And now my rvn files are empty again
Ian McLerran (Jun 29 2024 at 03:01):ahh, now just do gh auth login
Luke Boswell (Jun 29 2024 at 03:03):Ohk, that was the issue. Now it's working fine
Luke Boswell (Jun 29 2024 at 03:03):I definitely missed this part of the README
Please make sure to install and log into
ghbefore runningroc-start.
I've never used gh before
Ian McLerran (Jun 29 2024 at 03:04):The install.sh script currently checks for the gh cli, but roc-start itself really should be notifying you of these errors. I'll try to get that pushed out here soon.
Luke Boswell (Jun 29 2024 at 03:04):I also hadn't noticed the install.sh script. :sweat_smile:
Ian McLerran (Jun 29 2024 at 03:07):Well to be fair roc-start really shouldn't be giving you :check:s for your update when its totally failing! :sweat_smile:
Luke Boswell (Jul 05 2024 at 00:15):How do I create a basic-cli app without any packages?
$ roc-start app basic-cli
Error: The 'platform' parameter did not receive a value.
Usage:
roc-start app [options] <app-name> <platform> <packages...>
I've tried a few different things and haven't figure it out yet.
Luke Boswell (Jul 05 2024 at 00:17):Lol, figured it out -- missing a name for the app
$ roc-start app test basic-cli
Created test.roc ✔
I've got a fix for the "successful failures" issue when running roc-start update now. Fixes are live, and should give helpful error messages for most failure modes, and always let you know if the update failed.
Ian McLerran (Feb 22 2025 at 01:06):Coming soon to a terminal near you!
$ roc-start app --platform basic-cli:latest \
rtils:0.1.0 roc-ansi imclerran/roc-tinyparse:latest \
roc-semver json roc-heck:0.1.1
Creating main.roc...
Platform: roc-lang/basic-cli : 0.19.0
Packages
| imclerran/rtils : v0.1.0
| lukewilliamboswell/roc-ansi : 0.8.0
| imclerran/roc-tinyparse : v0.3.3
| roc-semver : ambiguous; use <owner>/roc-semver - skipping
| json : package repo not found; did you mean roc-json? - skipping
| roc-heck : version not found; latest is v0.1.0 - skipping
Created main.roc with 3 packages and skipped 3 packages ✔
Screenshot 2025-02-25 at 16.37.51.png
Ian McLerran (Mar 03 2025 at 17:22):New roc-start experience is getting close!
Screenshot 2025-03-03 at 14.09.32.png
Ian McLerran (Mar 10 2025 at 20:45):Very happy to say the new roc-start cli tool is finally ready for prime time! This was a full rewrite of the core functionality of the app, and very little was untouched of the 4925 lines of code (although when I have more time, the TUI itself really deserves a ground-up rewrite).
A ton of new features, as mentioned in the screenshot above, but my main goals were the following:
Hope ya'll find this useful! Let me know if you have any questions, encounter any bugs, or have suggestions for improvement!
Ian McLerran (Mar 10 2025 at 20:49):cli-usage.png
tui-main-menu.png
https://github.com/imclerran/roc-start
Ian McLerran (Mar 11 2025 at 20:05):In addition to minor bug fixes and UI improvements, a couple feature updates since 0.6.0:
$HOME/.rocstartthemes--force in the TUI Ian McLerran (Mar 19 2025 at 17:24):Roc-start can now install its own updates! (Assuming you have a global install of roc)
Starting with roc-start v0.7.3, just do roc-start update --install.
Last updated: Jul 26 2025 at 12:14 UTC