"legacy" and "modern" bundles and tools ( jpm / jeep / janet-pm )

[stevebeisner]

I'm relatively new to Janet, so maybe I've missed something. I've read a half-dozen or so papers/blogs/documents on the subject (see title of this discussion), but after becoming minimally fluent in Janet, itself, I'm still at a loss about best practice for packaging / bundles / etc.

Is there an existing or developing consensus on choosing modern vs legacy bundles for new development? And what about tools? Are we condemned to understand/use several different tools at various levels of official support? Honestly, the ambiguity surrounding this subject feels (to me) very unlike the clarity associated with the Janet language itself.

Do the people most influential in the excellent Janet project have opinions and recommendations for these issues? I'd love to hear. And thanks to the creators and contributors to Janet!

[bakpakin]

So my advice is basically - if you are not writing C or any other system language, use the old style packages (project.janet) as they should work both with jpm and janet-pm (spork). Spork will automatically create the bundle stuff for you so it just works.

If you are extending C but only in a very simple manner, both will work. project.janet is pretty general but can get confusing and difficult once customization is needed.

For other languages (rust, zig, etc.) or more complicated flows with custom compilers, flags, etc., I would recommend spork and using bundles. It's more verbose but breaks things out into steps.

Either way, try installing spork first and using janet-pm instead of jpm.

[taoeffect]

Thank you, I'm a bit confused though as to how to install janet-pm and how to install/use spork!

The docs say:

[sudo] janet --install .

That doesn't work:

-> % janet --install .
error: unable to infer bundle name for "/home/user/path", use :name argument or add :name to info file
  in errorf [boot.janet] on line 207, column 3
  in bundle/install [boot.janet] on line 4440, column 5
  in <anonymous> [boot.janet] (tail call) on line 4847, column 18
  in cli-main [boot.janet] on line 4884, column 

Then they later say:

First, make sure you have Janet and jpm installed. See the Janet docs for more information on this.

Clicking on the jpm link gives me:

AccessDeniedAccess DeniedFGMYBX237XZF64DYIqhuWdEI0DyiV2brrzg1BAoADmR63UOdhHNiOWKtwXqNfx7SPANFGKgBTj1TC9Adh6bGYcIqIFI=

I'm totally confused and at a loss. How does one get started with Spork? 🤔

Sorry for the total newbie question! (Love Janet btw! I redirected the newlisp community to using it as newLISP is no longer maintained)

[bakpakin]

That doesn't work:

You need to CD into the directory from which you cloned spork. In total (assuming Janet is installed):

git clone https://github.com/janet-lang/spork.git
cd spork
sudo janet --install .

(You may or may not need/want sudo).

Clicking on the jpm link gives me:

Looks like a bad link, here is the updated link

https://janet-lang.org/jpm/index.html

[taoeffect]

Thank you!

[stevebeisner]

Thanks Calvin. The advice is much appreciateed!

…

On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 2:39 PM Calvin Rose ***@***.***> wrote: So my advice is basically - if you are not writing C or any other system language, use the old style packages (project.janet) as they should work both with jpm and janet-pm (spork). Spork will automatically create the bundle stuff for you so it just works. If you are extending C but only in a very simple manner, both will work. project.janet is pretty general but can get confusing and difficult once customization is needed. For other languages (rust, zig, etc.) or more complicated flows with custom compilers, flags, etc., I would recommend spork and using bundles. It's more verbose but breaks things out into steps. Either way, try installing spork first and using janet-pm instead of jpm. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1748 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAEPMUS66AIOZGHM75G2BGL42N4VFAVCNFSM6AAAAACYZLIVWKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTMOBZGY2TCOI> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[1player]

I'm similarly confused, and in my case I haven't found the half-dozen articles suggesting one package manager or the other. I've been playing with Janet for a week, trying to figure out how jpm works (it's admittedly a bit clunky, defaults to writing to system directories for some reason. Not the best practice on Linux). I've now just found a passing mention of janet-pm and bundles and I have no idea what they are; a project I'm trying out suggests using janet-pm, but I haven't found a way to tell it NOT to write to /usr/lib/janet, even using its venv feature. I tried using sudo, it has overwritten spork I installed with my distro package manager along with janet, my /usr/lib/janet directory got borked and I had to reinstall the whole language from scratch. Ugh.

Honestly, it's been an enormous source of friction. The language is great to pick up, but I still have no idea how to best approach packaging choices from third-parties to contribute to their repository. It's been a few times already I try to run some janet code off github, trying to install dependencies fails for one reason or another (it tries to write to system dirs, native compilation fails, has an ad-hoc package system with its own issues) and I have to abandon the endeavour.

I wish the official documentation would bless one tool, and make a mention of these alternatives, what's their status, if things are in flux or it's just a case of NIH. Case in point, is jpm deprecated? Is janet-pm the future? I'm fine using languages with no official package manager (such as Odin), but they make it very easy to vendor stuff in and have builtin libraries that ship with the language itself. Given that 99% of janet projects depend on spork, which is distributed as a separate repo, 99% of time you have to deal with dependencies.

/rant from a frustrated janet noob

[sogaiu]

Sorry, no easy answers I'm afraid.

I suspect you don't want to do more reading, but for future readers:

• Unofficial FAQ
• Regarding jpm, janet-pm, etc.
• Discussion about vendoring starting at this comment.

[bakpakin]

Thanks for the feedback. At this point, I would like to deprecate JPM since I believe spork's functionality has reached parity. Deprecation might also add some urgency to port any remaining edge cases from jpm to janet-pm Also, for some reason many users are trying to use both to disastrous effect - I assume when something doesn't work with one they try the other. Mostly that should involve scrubbing documentation and pointing to the new thing - however, that can be difficult due to a number of other guides and reference materials written by 3rd parties.

As for system directories by default, that might be a default that we starting investigating and changing. In general, if you don't use sudo, Spork and JPM will not be able to overwrite anything in system directories and avoid such corruption issues. Rather than recommending sudo in docs, we should probably remove it and leave it to users who are consciously adding to root-owned directories.

[1player]

Thank you, this is exactly what I wanted to know: contributions should focus is on janet-pm. I'll start using it, and making notes and bug reports of any issues I find.

[dmarker]

I was trying to port spork for FreeBSD without jpm(1) but ran into issues:
janet -l ./bundle -e '(build)' works fine, but I'm missing a janet -l ./bundle -e '(install)' or similar to install into a local tree.

I tried the janet --install . from README but since the port build was as root that put thins in /usr/local/lib/janet.

It was at that point I had to go back to jpm(1) to make the port.

[bakpakin]

Does JANET_PATH=/path/to/dest janet --install . work? I believe that should put files in the correct place

[dmarker]

That did work! I thought I tried but that is fine. check with the JANET_PATH afetr install also works. I'll mend my port to use this method and not require jpm(1).

But the super power of jpm(1), for a packager like me, was the fact that I could pick ordering and jpm --tree=${WRKSRC}/jpm_tree "install" for each dependency. That is it let me sort out any conflicts, download the versions I want, and then let jpm(1) do its things. That also let me patch if necessary before calling install for a project.