eve libs

This repository contains the libraries used by various other packages in eve, and can be imported by others outside of eve. It forms a single go module, and can be imported via the usual go module facilities.

Several eve packages explicitly depend upon these libraries, notably pillar.

The libraries in here should depend on nothing else in eve, except other packages inside this module. These should not assume that they are running on a live eve platform, or have access to the more advanced and complex features like pubsub or hypervisors.

The purpose of eve-libs is to isolate standalone functionality, making it both easy to reuse and, perhaps more importantly, easy to test.

Using the libraries

These libraries should be imported explicitly in other packages using the full path, and should not use the go.mod replace directive to import them from a local path. This is to ensure that we always have an explicit chain of dependencies, that we can always build the code, and that compiled binaries always contain full package names.

For example, package pillar's go.mod file contains:

	github.com/jaypipes/ghw v0.8.0
	github.com/lf-edge/edge-containers v0.0.0-20221025050409-93c34bebadd2
	github.com/lf-edge/eve/api/go v0.0.0-00010101000000-000000000000
	github.com/lf-edge/eve-libs v0.0.0-20230303013136-e890ce9ee8a3
	github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/src/cmd/linuxkit v0.0.0-20220913135124-e532e7310810

These libs are imported as github.com/lf-edge/eve-libs v0.0.0-20230303013136-e890ce9ee8a3 just like all other libraries; they receive no special import treatment.

Developing Locally

If you need to update the libraries and simultaneously test their impact on other packages, you can use a replace clause in go.mod, but only temporarily. For example:

replace github.com/lf-edge/eve-libs => /path/to/go/src/github.com/lf-edge/eve-libs

When you are done and it works, do not commit the go.mod with the replace clause. Instead:

1. Create a Pull Request for your changes to eve-libs (this repository) and get it approved and merged
2. Remove the replace clause from go.mod
3. In your dependent package, e.g. pillar, update it like any other external dependency, e.g. go get github.com/lf-edge/eve-libs@main