How do I build library module?

[rrpolanco]

I'm coming from Go where I could just do go build on a module that doesn't have main.
My project has two files:

retry.v
v.mod

retry.v has the following module directive:

module retry

When I compile, the compiler says I need to build this as a native shared library:

v .       
retry.v:1:1: error: project must include a `main` module or be a shared library (compile with `v -shared`)
    1 | module retry
      | ^
    2 | 
    3 | // Function signature of retryable function

I don't want to build a shared library (dylib in my case) I just want to compile the module so it can be imported by other V libraries and/or applications. Thanks.

[JalonSolov]

All modules are essentially libraries, as they are imported and used.

Did you want to pre-compile your module and distribute it that way, instead of allowing access to the source? V doesn't support that mode of operation.

You can get something close to it by compiling to .o files, then you could distribute those, or you could run something like ar to collect them into a link library. That would be external to V, though.

[jorgeluismireles]

how would I find compilation errors for my library module w/o importing it to another module?

Write tests or write mains in an examples folder

[jorgeluismireles]

https://docs.vlang.io/testing.html

[rrpolanco]

Thanks @JalonSolov @jorgeluismireles , I understand. As an improvement/feature request, I would recommend we mirror go build. The go build command, when run on a module without a main package, checks that the code compiles successfully but discards the resulting compiled package, serving only as a validation step. Having something like this in the v toolchain make it easy to experiment with code quickly.

[JalonSolov]

You said you wanted to compile your lib. If all you want to do is make sure it is syntactically correct, V has these options:

  -check
    Scans, parses, and checks the files without compiling the program.

  -check-syntax
    Only scan and parse the files, but then stop. Useful for very quick syntax checks.

[JalonSolov]

You can find most V command line options by running v help and following along to other topics. The 2 I listed are part of the v help build output which is general build related commands There are C specific options, JS specific options, etc. Lots to explore.

[kitech]

build one .o for per module, avoid scan and build whole project used code.