gistfile1.txt

framework
  packageA
    bin
    docs
    src
      module1.nim
      module2.nim
      module3.nim
    tests
      tmodule1.nim
      tmodule2.nim
      tmodule3.nim
      all.nim

  packageB
    bin
    docs
    src
      module4.nim     ## requires module1
      module5.nim     ## requires module3
      module6.nim
    tests
      tmodule4.nim
      tmodule5.nim
      tmodule6.nim
      all.nim

  packageC
    bin
    docs
    src
      module7.nim     ## requires module2, module6
      module8.nim     ## requires module1, module5
      module9.nim
    tests
      tmodule7.nim
      tmodule8.nim
      tmodule9.nim
      all.nim

programs
  programA
    src
      module10.nim    ## requires module1, module4, module7

  programB
    src
      module11.nim    ## requires module2

  programC
    src
      module12.nim    ## requires module5, module8

Here are the things i'd like to be able to do:

• compile individual modules, i.e. module4.nim
• compile individual tests, i.e. tmodule4.nim
• compile all tests for a package, i.e. packageA/all.nim
• compile programs, i.e. programA
• compile individual modules in programs, i.e. module10

I don't want to litter my entire source tree with build products, so each package and program should probably have its own central /tmp, /nimcache and/or /bin directory.

I don't want to install my packages in some off-site location. For example, anytime I build a program, I want to compile against the latest files in the entire source tree.

I'd like to retain the ability to make each of the packages installable, i.e. via Nimble.

Also, I'm not clear how to resolve module name collisions. For example, is it possible that a module in one of my packages has the same name as a module in the Nim standard lib (i.e. module2 is called math.nim)?

compile individual modules, i.e. module4.nim
compile individual tests, i.e. tmodule4.nim
compile all tests for a package, i.e. packageA/all.nim
compile individual modules in programs, i.e. module10

That's something the, still planned, nimble c file.nim feature should be able to handle.

compile programs, i.e. programA

That's a job for nimble build.

Your list of requirements is unfortunately rather big so I don't think Nimble can satisfy all of them.

Here is an outline of how the current work-flow would work, and yes, I know it's not ideal:

• Each package in framework would have a .nimble file.
• Each of these packages would need to be installed by executing nimble install in their directories, this would need to be repeated each time a change is made to these packages (I know, not ideal).
• Your programs can then each get a .nimble file also in which you can specify the dependencies on the required packages in your framework.
• You can then build your programs with nimble build.

Alternatively you can create a nim.cfg file in each of your programs directories with a --path:<p> directive, where <p> is a PATH to your packages. This means you won't need to constantly reinstall the packages when they are changed, but this will not work when the paths change.

I'm not clear how to resolve module name collisions

Your package modules are already in their own packageName dirs (packageA, packageB, etc...). What you should do is import the package's module like so: import packageName/module.

import packageName/module

This I cannot get to work. I can do "import module", and it happens to find the right one (by accident?), but I cannot qualify the import with a package name, at least not in conjunction with --NimblePath: "Error cannot open 'packageName/module'"