dub sub-packages

[Alessandro via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Wednesday, 6 May 2015 at 15:28:53 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
> On 6/05/2015 11:39 p.m., Alessandro wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>> I've been learning D for a few months now and really liked it 
>> :) !
>> Currently I'm experimenting with client/server application
>> development using the ZeroMQ library D wrapper called "zmqd".
>> Although I could successfully build the basic hello_world
>> application with a custom written Makefile using dmd/rdmd, I've
>> tried to use the DUB package manager to achieve the same goal,
>> but I'm having some issues with it.
>> By following the DUB documentation at
>> http://code.dlang.org/package-format#build-options I created a
>> main dub project called "hello_world" (dub init hello_world) 
>> and
>> set up two sub-packages therein called "client" and "server" 
>> (dub
>> init client|server).
>> Then I configured the three dub.json files as follows:
>> hello_world/dub.json:
>> {
>>     "name": "hello_world",
>>     "description": "Hello World client/server application 
>> using ZMQ",
>>     "targetType": "none",
>>     "dependencies": {
>>              "hello_world:client": "*",
>>              "hello_world:server": "*"
>>     },
>>     "subPackages": [
>>              "./client/",
>>             "./server/"
>>      ]
>> }
>>
>> hello_world/client/dub.json:
>> {
>>     "name": "client",
>>     "description": "Hello World client application using ZMQ",
>>          "targetType": "executable",
>>          "sourceFiles": ["source/hwclient.d"],
>>     "dependencies": {
>>              "zmqd": "~>1.0.0-alpha"
>>     }
>> }
>>
>> hello_world/server/dub.json -> same as above with "server"
>> substituting "client"
>>
>> With this setting, from within "hello_world" directory, I can
>> build client and server individually with:
>>
>> $ dub build hello_world:client
>> $ dub build hello_world:server
>>
>> but when I simply try:
>>
>> $ dub build
>>
>> to build the whole thing at once, I get an error saying:
>>
>> Error executing command build:
>> Main package must have a binary target type, not none. Cannot
>> build.
>>
>> But if I change the "targetType" to "executable" or 
>> "autodetect"
>> in hello_world/dub.json I get the error:
>>
>> Configuration 'application' of package hello_world contains no
>> source files. Please add {"targetType": "none"} to it's package
>> description to avoid building it.
>> Error executing command build:
>> Main package must have a binary target type, not none. Cannot
>> build.
>>
>> What shall I do to have all sub-packages automatically built 
>> when
>> I build the main package? Is there a way to specify a small 
>> bash
>> script to have custom commands executed when giving the "dub 
>> run"
>> command?
>>
>> Sorry for the long post :( !
>
> $ dub build hello_world:client ; dub build hello_world:server
>
> Dub wasn't meant to build, more or less completely unrelated 
> project targets at the same time.

Hi Rikki,
Thank you for your answer.
So it seems my DUB setup was a bit redundant.
If I well understood, there is no point in having the root 
hello_world DUB package setup in the first place. I could just 
stay with the client and server sub-projects living in their own 
sub-directories and orchestrate the whole build in one go by 
means of a custom Makefile from the root directory. This would 
also allow me to launch the client/server application for testing 
in a custom-defined way (e.g. launching several clients and a 
single server in parallel).