Dependencies

Not yet implemented. Dependencies between packages are planned but not yet supported. The documentation below describes the intended behavior for a future release.

Dependencies allow a package to build on other packages. Each dependency is declared in the [dependencies] section of METHODS.toml with an alias, an address, and a version constraint.

Declaring Dependencies

[dependencies]
docproc     = { address = "github.com/mthds/document-processing", version = "^1.0.0" }
scoring_lib = { address = "github.com/mthds/scoring-lib", version = "^0.5.0" }

Each key (docproc, scoring_lib) is the alias — a short snake_case name used in cross-package references (alias->domain.name).

Dependency Fields

Field	Required	Description
`address`	Yes	The dependency's package address (hostname/path pattern).
`version`	Yes	Version constraint (see below).
`path`	No	Local filesystem path, for development-time workflows.

Aliases

The alias is the TOML key for each dependency entry. It must be snake_case (matching [a-z][a-z0-9_]*), and all aliases within a single manifest must be unique.

Aliases appear in cross-package references:

steps = [
    { pipe = "docproc->extraction.extract_text", result = "pages" },
    { pipe = "scoring_lib->scoring.compute_weighted_score", result = "score" },
]

Choose aliases that are short, meaningful, and easy to read in references.

Version Constraints

Version constraints specify which versions of a dependency are acceptable:

Form	Syntax	Example	Meaning
Exact	`MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH`	`1.0.0`	Exactly this version.
Caret	`^MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH`	`^1.0.0`	Compatible release (same major version).
Tilde	`~MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH`	`~1.0.0`	Approximately compatible (same major.minor).
Greater-or-equal	`>=MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH`	`>=1.0.0`	This version or newer.
Less-than	`<MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH`	`<2.0.0`	Older than this version.
Compound	constraint `,` constraint	`>=1.0.0, <2.0.0`	Both constraints must be satisfied.
Wildcard	``, `MAJOR.`	`1.*`	Any version matching the prefix.

Additional operators >, <=, ==, and != are also supported. Partial versions are allowed: 1.0 is equivalent to 1.0.*.

Local Path Dependencies

For development-time workflows where packages are co-located on disk, add a path field:

[dependencies]
scoring = { address = "github.com/mthds/scoring-lib", version = "^0.5.0", path = "../scoring-lib" }

When path is set, the dependency is resolved from the local filesystem instead of being fetched via VCS. The path is resolved relative to the directory containing METHODS.toml.

This is similar to Cargo's path dependencies or Go's replace directives.

Important behaviors of local path dependencies:

They are NOT resolved transitively — only the root package's local paths are honored.
They are excluded from the lock file.
When publishing, the path field is informational — consumers fetch via the address.