config on SOW

sow.yml Reference

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

sow.yml is the single configuration file of a managed workspace. It sits at the workspace root, declares which repositories and distributions exist, and holds the membership policy and signing settings that every build applies. Plain mode (sow create) never reads it.

This page lists every field the parser accepts. Anything not listed here is rejected — there are no undocumented keys and no keys reserved for future use.

How the file is read

SOW parses sow.yml with a strict decoder. Practically, that means:

sow init

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

sow init creates the root sow.yml and the private .sow/ state directory that make a directory a Workspace. It is also the convergence command for a config you wrote by hand: if sow.yml already declares Repositories and Dists, init materializes the ones that don’t exist yet and leaves the finished ones alone.

Synopsis

sow init [DIR] [--json]

DIR defaults to the current directory. init takes no -C/--workdir — the positional argument already names the target unambiguously.

sow config

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

sow config has two read-only subcommands. config check is the full preflight over sow.yml — run it after every hand edit and in CI. config show prints the configuration SOW actually computed, which is where you confirm that defaults, inherited architectures and normalized aliases resolved the way you expected.

Neither subcommand creates directories, touches a database, or corrects your file.

Synopsis

sow config check [-C DIR] [--json]
sow config show [--all] [-C DIR] [-r NAME] [-d NAME]... [--json]

sow help config lists both.

Reference

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This section is the stable contract for configuration fields, package references, paths, exit codes, JSON, platforms, and integrations. CLI syntax and state transitions live in Commands; use Get Started for the operating model.

Output examples show shape; identifiers, paths, hashes, timestamps, and counts vary by workspace. The built-in sow help remains the exact syntax authority.

sow.yml Reference

The complete configuration schema: workspace, repository, distribution, membership policy, signing, and publication targets.

Package References

The five ways to name a package on the command line, how ambiguity is resolved, and which forms rm, show, and where accept.