🔨 Basic Usage

Qob’s CLI is fully featured but simple to use, even for those who have very limited experience working from the command line.

The following is a description of the most common commands you will use while developing your Common Lisp project. See the Commands and options for a comprehensive view of Qob’s CLI.

Once you have installed Qob, make sure it is in your PATH. You can test that Qob has been installed correctly via the help command:

$ qob --help

The output you see in your console should be similar to the following:

NAME:
  qob - CLI for building, running, testing, and managing your Common Lisp dependencies

USAGE:
  qob [global-options] [<command>] [command-options] [arguments ...]

OPTIONS:
      --help           display usage information and exit
      --no-color       enable/disable color output
      --version        display version and exit
  -a, --all            enable all flag
  -g, --global         change default workspace to ~/.qob/
  -v, --verbose <INT>  set verbosity from 0 to 5 [default: 3]

COMMANDS:
  build          Build the executable
  clean          Delete various files produced during building
  create         Create a new Common Lisp project
  dists          List out all installed dists
  eval           Evaluate lisp form with a proper PATH
  files          Print all system files
  package        Build a system artifact
  info           Display information about the current system(s)
  init           Initialize project to use Qob
  install        Install systems
  install-deps   Automatically install system dependencies
  install-dists  Install dists
  list           List the registered systems
  load           Load lisp files
  locate         Print out Qob installed location
  status         Display the state of the workspace
  uninstall      Uninstall systems

AUTHORS:
  Jen-Chieh Shen <jcs090218@gmail.com>

LICENSE:
  MIT

The most common usage is probably to run qob with your current directory being the input directory. Then you run qob followed by a subcommand:

$ qob info             # Print out Qob-file information

Notice the subcommand can be nested:

$ qob clean workspace  # Deletes your `.qob` folder

Pass in option --help to look up more information regarding the command you are using:

$ qob clean --help

The output, and it shows there are 3 subcommands supported:

NAME:
  qob clean - Delete various files produced during building

USAGE:
  qob clean <type>

OPTIONS:
      --help           display usage information and exit
      --no-color       enable/disable color output
      --version        display version and exit
  -a, --all            enable all flag
  -g, --global         change default workspace to ~/.qob/
  -v, --verbose <INT>  set verbosity from 0 to 5 [default: 3]

COMMANDS:
  all              Do all cleaning tasks
  dist             Delete dist subdirectory
  workspace, .qob  Clean up .qob directory

Here is a list of known nested subcommands:

• qob create
• qob clean

Qob creates an isolated environment, so it won’t create any side effects after playing, testing, and running your lisp systems. But it’s important to know what quicklisp directory (normally it’s the same to ~/quicklisp/) the current Qob session is pointing to, so you can release the full potential of this tool!

Here is how Qob works behind the scene in different scenarios:

By default, Qob installs systems in a local scope, isolating your development environment from global systems. This allows you to build Common Lisp applications with pinned versions without polluting your global systems.

If the -g or --global option is specified, you can manage your global systems just as you would manage local systems.