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GitHub Package Indexes

An index is simply a GitHub repository that contains an index.toml file. This file contains a list of package names and their corresponding GitHub repository URLs. The ross CLI uses this index to find and install packages.

For example, if a research lab creates a private package index (a GitHub repository that contains an index.toml file), then any member of the lab with access to the repository can ross tap <URL> the index repository. After that, they can directly install packages from it using ross install <package>, similar to pip install <package> for installing packages from PyPI.

Note

If the index repository is made public, then anyone can tap the index and install packages from it.

How to Create an Index

To create an index, you can follow these steps:

  1. Go to GitHub and create a new repository.

  2. Name the repository something meaningful, like my_data_analyses_index.

  3. You can choose to make the repository public or private, depending on your needs.

  4. You can leave the repository empty; ross will create the index.toml file for you when you tap the index.

Note

The index repository must be a GitHub repository. No local copy of the repository is necessary.

Example index.toml

[[package]]
name = "github_repo"
url = "https://github.com/github_user/github_repo"

How to Tap an Index

To tell the ross tool about this index of packages, it must be tapped. This is similar to how Homebrew manages non-standard package indexes.

To tap an index, you can use the ross tap command followed by the URL of the GitHub repository. For example: 

ross tap https://github.com/github_user/github_repo
This command adds the index URL to your local ross configuration file. Now, running ross install will search through the tapped indexes for corresponding packages to install.