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proto v0.42 - New bin linking, JSON/YAML plugins, and more

· 3 min read
Miles Johnson
Miles Johnson
Founder, developer

Happy Halloween 🎃! In this release, we have a new bin linking strategy, and more schema plugin formats.

New bin linking strategy​

Early on in proto's development, we added ~/.proto/bin symlink support for installed tools, but chose to base it on the versions globally pinned in ~/.proto/.prototools. We opted for this approach as there wasn't a better solution at the time, and we merely wanted an alternative to shims. Since then, bin linking has become an after-thought.

However, a suggestion from @meop sparked a great idea for the future of bin linking. Instead of symlinking bins based on versions pinned in ~/.proto/.prototools, bins are now symlinked based on all of the versions installed, but grouped according to version ranges. The main binary will always point to the highest installed version, while we also create binaries for the highest major, and highest major + minor combinations.

For example, for Node.js (node), we may have the following:

  • ~/.proto/bin/node - Points to the highest version.
  • ~/.proto/bin/node-<major> - Points to the highest version within that major range (~major). Is created for each separate major version, for example: node-20, node-22.
  • ~/.proto/bin/node-<major>.<minor> - Points to the highest version within that major + minor range (~major.minor). Is created for each separate major + minor version, for example: node-20.1, node-22.4.
  • ~/.proto/bin/node-canary - Points to a canary install, if it exists.

Thanks to this approach, you could easily execute commands with specific versions of a tool, without having to set environment variables, update configurations, or force overrides. Just execute the binary directly!

$ node --version && which node
23.1.0
~/.proto/bin/node -> ~/.proto/tools/node/23.1.0/bin/node

$ node-22 --version && which node-22
22.5.1
~/.proto/bin/node-22 -> ~/.proto/tools/node/22.5.1/bin/node

This change is not retroactive and will slowly be applied tool-by-tool when it is installed. To force relinking of all binaries, you can use proto regen --bin after upgrading.

Support for JSON and YAML based plugins​

Support for TOML based plugins, an alternative to WASM based plugins, was integrated in proto v0.7; which is 35 versions ago! Since then, we've had great success with TOML plugins, as they represent about 97% of all plugins in the registry. The other 3% is WASM of course.

However, TOML is a configuration format that is quite unknown outside of the Rust ecosystem, and has a bit of a learning curve for new users. To ease the plugin authoring process, we now support JSON and YAML based plugins! To demonstrate this, here's our official moon plugin in all 3 formats:

moon.toml
name = "moon"
type = "cli"

[platform]
[platform.linux]
download-file = "moon-{arch}-unknown-linux-{libc}"

[platform.macos]
download-file = "moon-{arch}-apple-darwin"

[platform.windows]
download-file = "moon-{arch}-pc-windows-msvc.exe"

[install]
download-url = "https://github.com/moonrepo/moon/releases/download/v{version}/{download_file}"
download-url-canary = "https://github.com/moonrepo/moon/releases/download/canary/{download_file}"

[resolve]
git-url = "https://github.com/moonrepo/moon"

[metadata]
self-upgrade-commands = [ "upgrade" ]

JSON and YAML use camelCase keys, while TOML uses kebab-case.

Other changes​

View the official release for a full list of changes.

  • Each tool's primary executable file name is no longer based on the plugin's identifier, and is now based on what's configured in the new LocateExecutablesOutput.exes setting.
  • We now cache all text-based HTTP requests made from WASM plugins for 12 hours. This should greatly reduce the overhead cost of making requests, and will help for situations where an internet connection is lost.