Packages

Minimal makes it easy to add tools and dependencies to your project. Where a package lives depends on when you need it: building your code, running it, developing interactively, or inside a specific task.

Build and runtime dependencies

Build and runtime dependencies belong to your build plane and are managed with min add:

# Add as a build dependency (needed to compile your code)
$ min add --build protobuf

# Add as a runtime dependency (needed wherever your code runs)
$ min add --runtime openssl

Each command updates your minimal.toml automatically.

Build dependencies are packages needed during compilation but not at runtime. They are declared in the [stack] section:

[stack]
use = "rust"
build_packages = ["protobuf", "perl"]

Runtime dependencies are packages that must be present wherever the built software runs:

[stack]
use = "rust"
runtime_packages = ["openssl"]

Session tools

Tools you want available while developing interactively go in the project’s [session] block, not the build plane. Every contributor’s dev session picks them up:

[session]
packages = ["git", "ripgrep", "jq"]

To add a tool to a running session without editing config, run min add <package> from inside the session shell.

Task-specific packages

Packages can also be scoped to individual tasks, where they are only available when that task runs. The task must already be declared in minimal.toml — min add --task <name> updates an existing task’s packages list, it does not create the task:

[tasks.lint]
exec = "ruff check ."

Add a package to the declared task with min add --task <name>:

$ min add --task lint ruff

The task’s packages list is updated in place:

[tasks.lint]
exec = "ruff check ."
packages = ["ruff"]

Available packages

The Minimal Public Package Registry contains hundreds of packages including compilers, interpreters, build tools, and common CLI utilities.