elide.pkl Reference

Every native Elide manifest begins with:

amends "elide:project.pkl"

The schema itself lives in protocol/manifest/*.pkl, published at pkl.elide.dev/1.5.4/project.pkl. Pinning that URL in amends evaluates the manifest against exactly that immutable schema version, which Elide caches locally and verifies by SHA-256. A schema version is the Elide version it shipped with, so pinning a version pins the schema exactly as that release defined it.

A pin newer than the schema your Elide ships is not an error: within a major version the schema only ever gains properties, and the defaults of existing ones never change, so Elide evaluates the manifest against its own embedded schema. A project can therefore pin ahead of the binaries that build it. Setting a property that postdates the running Elide still fails, naming the property and telling you to upgrade; a pin from a different major version is refused.

While the elide:project.pkl form is still supported, it is recommended to write URL imports instead, as they allow more control over the manifest version used by a project. The elide: form may be retired in the future.

Use elide manifest to inspect the evaluated manifest as JSON. This page summarizes the main configuration groups; fields that only describe future or specialized build behavior are intentionally omitted.

Project metadata

A manifest can also read build.flags while it evaluates: the build flags passed as --flag/-f. See Build Flags.

Sources

import "elide:Sources.pkl" as Sources

sources {
  ["main"] = new Sources.SourceSetSpec {
    paths {
      "src/main/java/**/*.java"
      "src/main/kotlin/**/*.kt"
    }
  }
  ["test"] = new Sources.SourceSetSpec {
    type = "test"
    dependsOn { "main" }
    paths { "src/test/**/*.kt" }
  }
}

Source-set types are source, test, example, and other. Test sets receive test dependencies and participate in elide test.

Dependencies

dependencies {
  npm {
    packages { "react@19.0.0" }
  }
  pypi {
    packages { "requests>=2" }
  }
  maven {
    packages { "com.google.guava:guava:33.5.0-jre" }
    testPackages { "org.junit.jupiter:junit-jupiter:5.13.4" }
  }
}

Maven also supports compileOnly, runtimeOnly, processors, kotlinPlugins, modules, exclusions, repositories, and local JAR paths. The schema accepts PyPI declarations, but current builds cannot install them.

JVM and Kotlin

jvm {
  main = "example.Main"
  target = 25
  java {
    compiler {
      flags { "-Xlint:all" }
    }
  }
}

kotlin {
  compilerOptions {
    allWarningsAsErrors = true
    jvmTarget = 25
  }
}

Common Kotlin options include optIn, progressiveMode, warning controls, freeCompilerArgs, apiVersion, languageVersion, jvmTarget, and incremental compilation.

Artifacts

Import the schema that defines the artifact type:

import "elide:Jvm.pkl" as Jvm

artifacts {
  ["app"] = new Jvm.Jar {
    name = "app.jar"
    main = "example.Main"
    sources { "main" }
  }
}

Other artifact types include sources JARs, Javadoc JARs, native executables, static sites, and container images. Use elide build --inspect to see the tasks produced by the current manifest and binary.

Testing

Coverage is opt-in through --coverage or the manifest. Language-neutral test reports are configured under testing.reports; JVM and JavaScript coverage have separate settings under testing.coverage.

For a complete working project, see Elide Projects.