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Glossary

Collider
A tool that brings modern package management to Meson's native wrap ecosystem: dependency resolution, lockfiles, repositories, and publishing.
Collider Home
User-specific configuration directory. Defaults to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/collider or ~/.config/collider/.
Subcommand
A specific action that Collider performs, given as a positional argument (e.g. setup in collider setup).
Colliderfile (collider.json)
Project metadata and dependency declarations. Located alongside meson.build at the root of a project.
Configfile (config.json)
Application-wide configuration containing repository entries. Lives in ~/.config/collider/config.json.
Lockfile (collider.lock)
Pinned resolution state written by collider lock. Contains dependencies (direct, from collider.json) and packages (transitive), each with version, wrap_hash, and origin (the normalized repository URL the package was resolved from). Consumed by collider install for reproducible installs.
Origin
The normalized repository URL a package was resolved from, recorded for each locked entry in collider.lock. Normalization lowercases the scheme and host and strips a trailing slash so URLs compare equal.
Transitive dependency
A dependency pulled in by another dependency rather than declared directly in collider.json. Recorded under packages in collider.lock.
Resolver
The component that resolves all declared roots and their transitive dependencies in a single pass, surfacing cross-root version conflicts.
Frozen
collider install --frozen mode: install strictly from collider.lock and fail if the lockfile is missing or stale (does not match collider.json).
Drift
A mismatch between meson.build dependency() calls and collider.json, detected by collider check. Untracked dependencies appear in meson.build but not in collider.json; stale entries are tracked in collider.json but absent from meson.build. collider check exits non-zero (EX_DATAERR) when drift is found.
Repository
A storage location for wrap packages. Filesystem repositories are local directories, wrap repositories are remote WrapDB-compatible endpoints, and collider repositories extend the protocol with write operations.
WrapDB
Meson's wrap package database. Collider's wrap repositories speak the WrapDB-compatible protocol, exposing a releases.json index over a base URL such as wrapdb.mesonbuild.com/v2/.
Publish URL
Required HTTPS, HTTP, or file:// base URL for filesystem repositories. Used to rewrite archive URLs when publishing packages.
Push token
Bearer token authorizing writes to a collider repository, read from an environment variable (default COLLIDER_PUSH_TOKEN, overridable with --push-token-env). Sent as a bearer token to the repository write endpoints: _collider/v1/push by collider publish, and _collider/v1/packages/<name>/<version> by collider unpublish.
releases.json
WrapDB-compatible index of packages and versions, generated for filesystem repositories.
Dependency Names
Provided dependency names derived from a wrap [provide] section. Emitted in releases.json when present.
System dependency
A dependency satisfied by the host system rather than fetched as a wrap. Marked with source system in collider.json and listed separately by collider status.
Version Constraint
A PEP 440 specifier string such as >=1.2,<2.0, stored in collider.json and enforced during package resolution.
Cache
Local store for wrap files and archives, located at <collider home>/cache/. Enables offline builds.
Wrap File
A Meson .wrap file describing a package, its source archive, and optional patch archive. Stored in repositories and installed to subprojects/.
Package Cache
Meson's subprojects/packagecache/ directory containing cached archives. Collider populates this to enable offline builds.
Archive
A source or patch archive referenced by a wrap. May be hosted upstream or stored alongside wraps in a filesystem repository.
Patch Archive
A tar.xz archive containing changes for a wrap patch_url. Produced by collider patch.
Build Directory
The Meson build directory. Collider defaults to collider-build.
Source Directory
The Meson source directory.
Infofile
Meson introspection files under <builddir>/meson-info/ (e.g. intro-projectinfo.json).
Wrap Package
A package represented by a .wrap file plus its source archive and optional patch archive.