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Creating Projects

In this section, we will walk through the process of creating a new project using KnitPkg. While creating a project is very similar to creating a package, this guide provides a dedicated example to highlight the key differences and best practices.

Example: Creating an ATR Indicator

We will create a new indicator project called atr, which implements the Average True Range (ATR) using the ATR function from the @douglasrechia/calc package. The resulting binary will be named KnitPkgATR.ex5.

Step 1–4: Follow the Package Initialization Flow

You can follow the same initial steps described in Creating Packages:

  1. Create a new Git repository (e.g., DouglasRechia/atr)
  2. Open a terminal in your MQL5/Indicators directory
  3. Run kp init
  4. Choose indicator as the project type

Here’s an example of the terminal output during initialization:

alt text

Note

While this example uses an indicator project, you could just as easily create an Expert Advisor or any other type of project to consume KnitPkg packages.

Step 5: Add and Install Dependencies

We will use two packages:

  • @douglasrechia/bar — for bar and time series utilities
  • @douglasrechia/calc — for the ATR calculation

Run the following commands:

kp add @douglasrechia/bar
kp add @douglasrechia/calc
kp install

Note

For packages, you use kp autocomplete. For projects (indicators, experts, etc.), use kp install.

After installation, your dependencies section in knitpkg.yaml should look like this:

dependencies:
  '@douglasrechia/bar': ^1.1.0
  '@douglasrechia/calc': ^1.0.1

A lock.json file will also be created, locking the resolved versions.

Step 6: Implement the Indicator

Now let’s use the ATR function from calc to implement the indicator logic.

You can find the complete source code here:

Once implemented, compile the indicator:

kp compile

Attach the compiled KnitPkgATR.ex5 to a chart in MetaTrader to visualize the result:

alt text

Step 7: Register the Project

Once the indicator is working and committed to Git, follow the instructions in Registering a New Project to register it in the KnitPkg Registry.

To verify the registration:

kp info mql5 @douglasrechia/atr

Congratulations! You’ve created and registered a complete indicator project using KnitPkg packages. This demonstrates how easy it is to build modular, maintainable MQL5 projects with dependency management and version control.