Sublime Forum

Installation of multiple packages at once

#1

Hey there.

I’m wondering if there’s any good solution to adding multiple packages at once, via a GitHub repo for instance.
If I understand everything correctly I could just make sure Package Control is installed and then copy the settings file between machines, but doesn’t that overwrite previously installed packages?

The scenario would be something like this:

]Various packages from here and there available through Package Control/]
]Some packages privately forked with private add-ons (is this ok?)/]
]This should then be installed on several machines, possibly with previous installations and some settings/]

I’d probably be hung to dry if my colleagues precious setups would be overwritten. Any ideas how best to do this?

I’ve seen Package Sync, but then I’d have to share that folder to everyone + that would overwrite settings and packages (I think??). What say ye?

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#2

There is an Advanced Install Package command that accepts a comma-separated list of packages to install. That doesn’t solve the problem of adding custom GitHub repos as “Repositories.” If you have too many GitHub repos, users will hit the anonymous 60-requests-per-hour rate limit, and won’t be able to fetch package metadata from the API. This is why the channel exists. If you have enough packages, you might need to set up your own channel, which would take some work since you need to install the crawler from the packagecontrol.io source code and configure it with your own GitHub API keys.

You could use the Advanced Install Package command directly, or build a UI in front of it. So far I haven’t seen any activity towards an alternate install interface, although some people do want “batch install.” I believe the interface is the hard part. With over 3,000 packages, opening up a view where you can check them off seems like it wouldn’t really be any better than installing one at a time.

Ideally I’d love to make a “cart” functionality on the Package Control website, and then use websockets to communicate with Sublime Text to allow installing packages in a bulk way. Unfortunately working on Package Control full time doesn’t even earn me enough money to feed my family, so I can’t really sit down for a month or two and do that.

Anyway, that was probably enough of a tangent. If you have any further questions, let me know, or possibly post an issue on the Package Control GitHub issues. At least there I will get notifications of new comments.

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#3

Thanks a lot. Then maybe the advanced install is the way to go, adding repositories first to find the altered versions, or at least the easiest way? There aren’t that many packages and at the moment it looks like only one needs to be altered.

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#4

If you only need to modify packages that are already on Package Control and are using ST3, you should check out override packages. You would then only need to copy the files directly into ST’s Packages folder and install it normally with Package Control.

See packagecontrol.io/docs/customizing_packages.

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#5

Hehe, just posted another “batch install” feature request, hadn’t noticed this thread, sorry!

Being able to install as a comma list presumes you know their “proper pkg name”, which isn’t necessarily the same as what they display in UI always, so that definitely gets in the way of using AdvInstall. While I agree that something akin to what you describe with packagecontrol.io site would be ideal, even allowing UX of not having to drop fully out every single time would be significant time saver when you want to install multiple packages (versioning prevents keeping them and just copying in, because when you’re always installing “latest” ST/SM, there’s no assurance old copies of pkgs are compatible with latest ST/SM).

A better suggestion might be allowing ST (and SM, because I presume SM is headed towards PkgCtrl enablement) to dump a file with list of installed packages in a format, such that installing that list in a new install would cause PkgCtrl to go out and install all pkgs mentioned in the list. That solves the “minimum viable version” problem nicely. It also works even when employees aren’t allowed to upload arbitrary binary files (which copying pkgs requires, and often isnt allowed), because the list could be text, and user sent to themselves via email if needed, then copied into place. Just a thought.

Hope this helps, but it’s a necrothread, so who knows if anyone will ever see this.

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