Modules & Imports

Mist organizes code through a file-system based module system with explicit path imports.

The Module System

Each .mist file in src/ corresponds to a module. and a directory/package.mist is a package like mod.rs, packages don't need package.mist to be functional, as long as a .mist file exists it will map it to pacakge_name::file_name.

Imports

Use the use keyword with a path to bring items from other modules or external crates into scope.

use std::fs;
use std::process;
use std::path::Path;
use std::collections::HashMap;

// Import specific items
use my_module::Helper;

Visibility

Items can be re-exported with a visibility modifier on the import:

pub use internal::format;

Sidefiles

Any non-.mist file in src/ (e.g., .rs, .toml, data files) is treated as a sidefile — it is copied directly into the output directory .mist/src/ during transpilation. This allows you to keep Rust helper files or configuration alongside your Mist source.

src/
├── main.mist
├── helper.rs        # copied to .mist/src/helper.rs
└── config/
    └── data.json    # copied to .mist/src/config/data.json

Project Structure

A typical Mist project looks like this:

my-project/
├── Cargo.toml
├── src/
│   ├── main.mist
│   ├── my_api/
│   │   ├── package.mist
│   │   ├── methods.mist
│   │   └── utils.mist
└── .mist/
    └── src/
        ├── main.rs
        └── my_api/
            ├── mod.rs
            ├── methods.rs
            └── utils.rs

The .mist/src/ directory contains the transpiled Rust output.