Linking Packages in Development

esy allows to link a package in development to a project so that changes to the linked package are observed in "real time" without the need to keep re-installing it.

When building a project esy will check & rebuild linked packages on any changes in their source trees.

With esy packages

To link a package to the project add a special link: resolution to project's resolutions field alongside the dependency declaration:

"dependencies": {
  "reason": "*"
},
"resolutions": {
  "reason": "link:../path/to/reason/checkout"
}

If you are linking to a folder with many esy packages in it, use the path to the json file that will be use to resolve the dependency, for example:

"dependencies": {
  "refmterr": "*",
},
"resolutions": {
  "refmterr": "link:../reason-native/refmterr.json"
}

Why resolutions?

This is because in case any other package in the project's sandbox depends on reason package then it will certainly conflict with link: declaration (nothing conforms to link: except the same link).

Thus we use resolutions so that constraint solver is forced to use link: declaration in every place reason package is required.

With opam packages

It is also possible to link an opam package, the mechanism is the similar but you need to specify a path to an *.opam file in a link: resolution:

"dependencies": {
  "@opam/lwt": "*",
  "@opam/lwt_ppx": "*"
},
"resolutions": {
  "@opam/lwt": "link:../path/to/lwt/checkout/lwt.opam",
  "@opam/lwt_ppx": "link:../path/to/lwt/checkout/lwt_ppx.opam"
}

The need to specify an *.opam file is because an opam package development repository can contain multiple packages.