How do you properly / cleanly add dependencies to project?

[hamannju]

Hi, I am just getting started with the Polylith architecture so please excuse me if I got something wrong. So far I really like this design and look forward to working with this structure.

I have spent a lot of today researching and watching your talks and Youtube videos and one thing struck me as a bit odd: the poly cli supports almost every management operation and looks to be quite automation friendly, but if I want to add a brick to a deployment then suddenly I have to manually edit a /projects/project-1/pyproject.toml and then add lines like ../../components/component1, ../../bases/base1 etc.

Am I missing something? I just watched the poly cli youtube video and that was how you did it too there. I was kind of expecting a command like: poly add project1 components/component1 bases/base1 ...

Is this something that would make sense? I am used to using uv so I guess that is where my expectation comes from.

[DavidVujic]

I’m happy that you have found Polylith and also the recordings. There’s the “poly sync” command that will add any missing components in the projects. If you have code that is already added to a project (such as a base) that import Polylith components: the command will add the ones used, but missing in the configs.

[hamannju]

Ok. That I have understood. Thank you :)

How do you add the "initial" base(s) to the project right after creation? Those have to be added manually to pyproject.toml?

[DavidVujic]

Yes, you add the base manually to the project. I can see the use case to directly add it to a project when created. The workflow is often the other way, you start with writing code - before you have defined a project. Polylith is very code-focused and treats the projects as implementation details that you can think about later in the process. The idea is to allow the teams to begin where they want: the feature, the endpoint - or the deployable artifact (the project). I like your idea and think it would make sense to have an option to add a created base with a command or from the existing “poly create base” command. This would make sense for the use case when you begin defining a project before the code.

[hamannju]

I thought about this a bit yesterday. My understanding is mapping a base or multiple bases to a project is an entirely manual operation that will not be done in an automated way. As in, a human will do that.
Then, why not give the options upons creating (or modifying) a project to have some kind of a TUI in the polylith-cli command that lets you pick from a list of bases you already have.

Like:

uv run poly create project --name my-project

Creating new project "my-project"
Base "my-project" of the same name has been automatically added to pyproject.toml
Please select any other bases to be added:
Available bases /
    my-project    [x]
    my-other-base [ ]
    so-many-bases [ ]

Do components get directly added to projects or only through bases via "poly sync"? If it is only via indirection this TUI could already be sufficient.

It essentially seems like a way of managing the pyproject.toml files for projects through the poly cli tool.

[DavidVujic]

I like the idea of an interactive way for the project initialization! I’ll think about it. Usually, adding a base is such a simple operation that adding it manually is quick and straightforward and a one-time thing. But a more wizard-like way of adding would be cool, if the CLI is designed with good UX. About poly sync: Yes, if you have a base added, the other used bricks will be added with “poly sync”. The command is following the imports. (Sorry for not replying in the thread, responses via email doesn’t seem to be supported that well in GitHub)

[hamannju]

Glad that you like the idea. What I like about the polylith is that it is so clean. I trade a bit of upfront training and an initially steeper learning curve for long-term control and effective code re-use. It just feels natural that the tooling should support an equally clean workflow :)

[DavidVujic]

Great! I'll start working on a more interactive CLI workflow from your idea. Currently vacationing with the family, so will likely do this in a slower pace than usual 😄