Architecture

Quiver is a single-crate Rust CLI. The codebase is intentionally split into focused modules under src/.

High-level flow

nupackage.toml
  -> resolver
  -> installer
  -> .nu-env/modules
  -> quiver.lock

At install time, the flow is:

1. Parse nupackage.toml.
2. Resolve module and plugin dependencies to exact commits.
3. Fetch repository data and release assets as needed.
4. Materialize modules into .nu-env/modules/ or the global modules directory.
5. Compute deterministic SHA-256 checksums.
6. Write quiver.lock or config.lock.

Source modules

• main.rs: dispatches CLI subcommands
• cli.rs: clap-based command definitions
• manifest.rs: manifest parsing and validation
• lockfile.rs: lockfile parsing and serialization
• resolver.rs: dependency resolution and conflict detection
• installer.rs: install/update orchestration, plugin fetch/build flow, .nu-env generation
• git.rs: git fetch, clone, ref, and export behavior
• checksum.rs: directory hashing
• config.rs: global configuration and install path helpers
• nu.rs: Nushell version requirement parsing
• error.rs: shared error types

Runtime paths

• Git cache: ~/.local/share/quiver/installs/git/
• Shared plugins: ~/.local/share/quiver/installs/plugins/
• Shared Nushell versions: ~/.local/share/quiver/installs/nu_versions/
• Project modules: .nu-env/modules/
• Global modules: platform config dir under nushell/vendor/quiver/modules/

Design constraints

• Dependencies are git-based rather than registry-based.
• Conflicting dependency resolutions are treated as errors.
• Lockfiles pin commits and checksums for reproducibility.
• Standard user-facing output goes to stderr, leaving stdout available for structured output and generated hooks.