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Intro to DUB

DUB is the official package manager for the D programming language, providing simple and configurable cross-platform builds. DUB is well integrated in various IDEs and can also generate configuration for third party build systems and IDEs.

Use the DUB registry website to discover packages and publish your own.

The CLI can be used to

DUB is bundled with most D compilers' distributions. However, it's also possible to install it separately. See Installing DUB for details.

DUB Basics

DUB is a build tool similar to other modern languages build tools like Javascript's npm and Rust's cargo.

A recipe file called dub.sdl (or dub.json) is used to configure a DUB project.

SDL is a "Simple Declarative Language" that uses a familiar C syntax. Whether to use SDL or JSON for the DUB file is a matter of taste.

User/System-wide default settings can be specified in a settings file.

A recipe file may look like this:

name "myproject"
description "A minimal D application."
authors "My Name"
copyright "Copyright © 2024, My Name"
license "Boost"

dependency "libasync" version="~>0.9.5"

configuration "library" {
    targetPath "target/lib"
}

configuration "unittest" {
    dependency "tested" version="~>0.9.5"
    dependency "dshould" version="~>1.7.1"
    targetPath "target/test"
}

DUB Configurations are used to create different variations of a project.

In the above example, all configurations include a dependency on libasync because that's declared at the top-level, but only the unittest configuration includes the dependencies tested and dshould.

To build a project, run dub build (or just dub).

As a project is built, DUB automatically resolves, downloads and builds its dependencies as needed.

The resolved dependency versions are stored in a file next to the recipe file, called dub.selections.json, which is similar to a lock file.

When running dub test, all Unit Tests found in sourcePaths are executed using the unittest configuration by default.

To specify a configuration explicitly when building, use the --config option:

dub build --config=library

DUB also uses the concept of build types to define what to build. Many build types are pre-defined, but the most common ones are debug and release.

Hence, to build the release version of a library, the following command could be used:

dub build --config=library --build=release

Finally, to run the application, use dub run.

Check Building for more details.

Next Steps

First Steps completes this overview of the basic DUB workflow.

The DUB Guide goes into more details about building, testing, configuring dependencies and registries, shared libraries, publishing packages and more.

More experienced users can use the DUB Reference and CLI Reference for a comprehensive list of the available options.

Last update: January 11, 2024
Created: September 1, 2023