Suggestions for the New Package System

I apologize if you would prefer I submit these to the bug/request system, and I will if so, but I admit I’m a little scared of it because I’m not really sure how to do it properly. I’d also like to generate discussion about my thoughts.

I have two suggestions for the package system. I may come up with more.

The first is that I think it would be really useful to have a way to install packages in batch. I know I can select multiple packages to download, but after they download, I have to install them one by one. It would even be fine if all it did was add them to some sort of queve so that the installation for each went one after another. It’d be a small time gain, but it’s just one of those things that would make it that much better.

The second suggestion is to detect if there are no options to set on the last part of the installation process and skip it. Right now it says, "Please choose the appropriate options (if applicable) and click Finish to install the package." Again, this is a small change, but it’d make the installation process just a little smoother and more enjoyable. If there are no additional options to set, then we shouldn’t even see the message that asks us to. The installation would already be finished.

By all means, tell me what you think as well.

I think the installing one by one is mainly because the installation is interactive, you may need to agree to the license, it may have a readme etc. Also, you would need to check installation failure automatically rather than by looking at the console output, if it fails what do you do? Roll it back? Stop the queue? Its feasible that some packages may depend on the installation of others before they themselves are installed.

HP Unix platforms have a concept of ’bundles’(similar to groups in RH/Centos), this is a set of packages formed into a bundle that is installed as one entity, ie the user just does one install but several packages are actually installed. You could for instance have evo’s demo site components as a bundle, then on one install you’d get wayfinder, ditto, and all the other goodies in one go. It could install with default props then you customise later or customise on the initial interactive bundle install say.

Quote from: Compeek at Jun 25, 2009, 12:17 AM

I apologize if you would prefer I submit these to the bug/request system, and I will if so, but I admit I’m a little scared of it because I’m not really sure how to do it properly. I’d also like to generate discussion about my thoughts.

No, discussions like this are best here, imo. JIRA is mainly used for bug reports or specific feature requests. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

The first is that I think it would be really useful to have a way to install packages in batch. I know I can select multiple packages to download, but after they download, I have to install them one by one. It would even be fine if all it did was add them to some sort of queve so that the installation for each went one after another. It’d be a small time gain, but it’s just one of those things that would make it that much better.

We thought a lot about this at the beginning of designing the system, but decided against it. The reasons are pretty simple - shamblett’s said some of them.

1. Package installation in MODx is not your simple ’install a plugin’ that lives in WordPress or other systems. Packages can be comprised of anything - they can contain Resources, Templates, multiple Snippets, files, resolver scripts, etc.
2. License Agreements / Readmes. We thought of handling this ergo Eclipse - with a selection screen that toggles between selected LA/readmes. But, we decided against that for a few reasons - we want people to actually read the readmes. Writing the code to do multiple selections would be a very large code increase for a small feature (not worth it). And finally it would just overcomplicate the process.
3. "Queueing" as you have stated it simply isn’t plausible in a web-app. What happens if one fails? Are the others dependent? Or do they carry on? How are those relationships maintained? What happens if a fatal error happens in the middle? How is it recovered? What about browser timeouts, server max execution times, console logging? What about Setup Options for each of those components? How is that handled? I could go on, but as you can see the feature causes too many questions and problems to be worth it, in our opinion.

The second suggestion is to detect if there are no options to set on the last part of the installation process and skip it. Right now it says, "Please choose the appropriate options (if applicable) and click Finish to install the package." Again, this is a small change, but it’d make the installation process just a little smoother and more enjoyable. If there are no additional options to set, then we shouldn’t even see the message that asks us to. The installation would already be finished.

That’s fair, and a good suggestion. That one definitely file in JIRA.

What you guys have said about my first suggestion makes a lot of sense. I never thought much about dependencies or what to do if there’s an error. And splittingred, what you said about a large code increase for a small feature, makes even more sense because we really only install packages at the beginning and once in a long while in the future. So yeah, I agree that it’s not really plausible.

I’m off to file the second one in JIRA.

I submitted the second suggestion to JIRA, and this morning I got an email saying it has been implemented! You guys are fast! Very nice work.