Creating Paclets for Mathematica packages

The Mathematica packages in the toolkit are all distributed to users using the Paclet system. This is described in detail in a notebook and introductory video by Todd Gayley, the creater of the Paclet system. This page gives a brief description of the steps required to build paclets for distribution by the toolkit.

1. Increment the version number

All paclets should have a unique version number. When multiple versions are installed, the version loaded by Mathematica will typically be the one with the largest version number. As such, the first step in creating a paclet is to update the version number inside the PacletInfo.wl file.

2. Build documentation

Before creating a paclet, most packages have documentation which should be built. See the documentation guide for instructions.

3. Create Paclets

The paclet is built using the CreatePacletArchive function in Mathematica. This should be given a list of files to include in the paclet. Packages in the toolkit include a CreatePaclet.nb notebook within the Source directory which already includes a list of the appropriate files to include for that paclet. In order to create the paclet, it is sufficient to run the CreatePacletArchive command in this notebook.

4. Copy paclet to the to paclet server

The paclet server is a simple web server with a directory containing the paclets along with an index file. The new paclet files should be copied to the server inside a Paclets subdirectory.

5. Update the paclet index

The index file should be updated by running PacletManager`BuildPacletSiteFiles with the path where the paclets are stored (the directory inside which the Paclets subdirectory exists).