Pkg REPL compatibility bounds

[staticfloat]

We need a way to specify compatibility bounds when adding packages, interactively through the REPL mode. I'm thinking something like pkg> add Compat@[0.55.0+], or perhaps pkg> add Compat followed by pkg> restrict Compat 0.55.0-0.66.0

What do you guys think?

[KristofferC]

You can already do something like

(Foo) pkg> add [email protected]
  Updating registry at `~/.julia/registries/Uncurated`
  Updating git-repo `https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/Uncurated.git`
 Resolving package versions...
  Updating `Project.toml`
  [34da2185] + Compat v0.55.2

Perhaps that should also put Compat = "0.55" into the compatibility section?

[KristofferC]

Should probably show the compatibility bounds in the status output as well

[staticfloat]

Maybe we should allow “add [email protected]“ to set a lower bound, as that’s the most common use case. Maybe go whole hog and allow “add [email protected]”

[StefanKarpinski]

Compat = "0.55" in the compatibility section means Compat = "^0.55.0".

[oxinabox]

I propose that the API for this be based around the versions of packages currently being used in the Manifest.
This would be partnered with #1607 which would allow things to ignore the current compat settings.

For sake of example, lets call this function write_compat
And it will take options:

• extend::Bool which if true (default?) will add the compatibility to what is already there, and if false will clear all current compat sections and just write what you have to be there.
• specificy being one of ^, ~, ==, <=, >=, etc (with ^ being the default), which controls what restrictor is written.
• packages (optional) which packages to include. Defaults to all packages in Project.toml

So if I just created a new project for some data science I might do:

pkg"add CSV, DataFrames, Plots"
write_compat()

which will give me a Project.toml withat has those packages and normal (carat) bound to the current versions. Which is what i normally do when I start a new project.

If I want to later restrict to also support a newly released CSV v0.6 I would do:

pkg"add [email protected] --ignore-compat"
write_compat("CSV")

pkg"resolve"  # make sure that we no longer are needing to `--ignore-compat`

If I became paranoid about thing breaking, and i wanted to lock all the versions down to what i know currently works.

write_compat(extend=false, restriction= ==)

This API wouldn't do everything, in particular some things would be much easier going into Project.toml to do, like removing compat for an old version of something.

But I think it would nicely handle a lot of common use-cases, and while nontraditional, would be more useful than something that basically just replaces edits to a text file with commands that use basically the same characters in the REPL.

[IanButterworth]

Introduced in #2702

If anyone's been using it, it would be good to get feedback!