[TxMt] Re: Bundles, using and developing best practices

[Allan Odgaard]

On 18 Nov 2009, at 19:16, Gerd Knops wrote:

> I am somewhat confused about what the best practices are to use and  
> develop bundles theses days.
>
> What I used to do was to have a checkout of the subversion directory  
> in "/Library/Application Support/TextMate". That allowed me to  
> easily apply fixes and commit them. And when I wanted to use a  
> bundle from "Review" I just created a symlink of that bundle to "~/ 
> Library/Application Support/TextMate/Bundles".
>
> Now we have some bundles left in subversion, many bundles migrated  
> to github. We got Allan's "bl" tool (not sure what to do with  
> "Managed", I made "Pristine Copy" a symlink to it), and we got Hans'  
> "GetBundles" which seems rather nice too.
>
> I guess gone are the days where a single "svn update" would get you  
> the latest of all bundles.

The ‘bl’ tool is still WIP but when officially released this should be  
the tool used to install bundles (perhaps via a UI) and ‘bl update’  
takes care of updating all installed bundles (including Support folder  
and it may also handle plug-ins and themes).

Bundle authors will be able to run their own indexes which users can  
add as sources to ‘bl’, thereby also handling updating these.

I think for 99% of users it should solve 99% of their needs.

I am btw regularly pushing new builds of ‘bl’ to http://updates.textmate.org/bl.bz2 
  — if you just run ‘bl’ it lists the commands/options with minimal  
info about each.

> I am also not sure how to develop/change bundles that are hosted on  
> github. My current approach is:
>
> - Delete the bundle from "Pristine Copy" (if it is there)
> - Create a fork on github (or if it is a new bundle create a new  
> repository)
> - Clone that fork to "Pristine Copy"
> - Make changes, push and send a "pull request" to the owner of the  
> original bundle.
>
> What are the recommended/best working workflows?

Clone the bundle to ~/Library/Application Support/TextMate/Bundles,  
make your changes in TextMate, and then commit + push.

If you already have the bundle installed it is a good idea to remove  
(from Pristine Copy etc.) before cloning — in 2.0 it no longer merges  
bundles unless the info.plist in the “local” bundle is a delta file, I  
am considering back-porting this behavior, but I fear this is more  
involved than a simple change.