Basic Usage

Starting a New Package

To initialize a new mason package, run mason new. The same can also be done using mason init as follows:

mkdir newPackage
cd newPackage
mason init

This starts an interactive session which walks a user through the process of creating a project using Mason. This is highly recommended for new users.

A more advanced user may use the mason new [ options ] <project name> command, for example:

mason new MyPackage

This creates a git repository by default, unless --no-vcs is included.

Mason packages can also be initialized using the mason init [options] [directory path].

For example, for an existing directory named MyPackage,

mason init MyPackage

# OR

cd MyPackage
mason init

The package will have the following hierarchy:

MyPackage/
 │
 ├── Mason.toml
 ├── example/
 ├── src/
 │   └── MyPackage.chpl
 └── test/

The first file listed is the Mason.toml. This is the manifest file for the package. All dependencies for the package are listed in this file as well as additional metadata about the package.

The src/ folder is where the source code of the package should reside. As you might expect, the test/ folder and the example/ folder hold tests and examples for your package, respectively. We will get to the additional functionality that comes with these folders later.

Mason enforces that the main file be named after the package to enforce namespacing. MyPackage.chpl will be the first file listed in src/.

You can create a package in a directory that differs from the mason package name with the mason {new,init} –name flag. This may be useful when creating a package in a directory that is an illegal Mason package name, such as names with dashes. For example,

mason new illegal-module-name --name LegalModuleName

# OR

mkdir illegal-module-name
mason init illegal-module-name --name LegalModuleName