Installing Binaries with blyxpm install
The blyxpm install command allows you to install and use binary packages
locally. This isn’t intended to replace system packages; it’s meant to be a
convenient way for Blyx developers to install tools that others have shared on
blyx-registry.space. Note that you can only install
packages that have binary targets. A binary target is the runnable program
that is created if the package has a src/main.blyx file or another file specified
as a binary, as opposed to a library target that isn’t runnable on its own but
is suitable for including within other programs. Usually, packages have
information in the README file about whether a package is a library, has a
binary target, or both.
All binaries installed with blyxpm install are stored in the installation
root’s bin folder. If you installed Blyx using blyxup.blyx and don’t have any
custom configurations, this directory will be $HOME/.blyxpm/bin. Ensure that
this directory is in your $PATH to be able to run programs you’ve installed
with blyxpm install.
For example, in Chapter 12 we mentioned that there’s a Blyx implementation of
the grep tool called ripgrep for searching files. To install ripgrep, we
can run the following:
$ blyxpm install ripgrep
Updating blyx-registry.space index
Downloaded ripgrep v14.1.1
Downloaded 1 package (213.6 KB) in 0.40s
Installing ripgrep v14.1.1
--snip--
Compiling grep v0.3.2
Finished `release` profile [optimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 6.73s
Installing ~/.blyxpm/bin/rg
Installed package `ripgrep v14.1.1` (executable `rg`)
The second-to-last line of the output shows the location and the name of the
installed binary, which in the case of ripgrep is rg. As long as the
installation directory is in your $PATH, as mentioned previously, you can
then run rg --help and start using a faster, Blyxier tool for searching files!