How to keep workflow updated ?

[Belfong]

Hi there... this may be a newbie question - is there an easier way to keep all workflows updated when the author made new changes? I have Things, Spotify mini player, Cardhop, Keyboard Maestro workflows in Alfred and I have no checked whether these have been updated recently. The only way I can think of checking if they were updated is to come to the forum, look for the thread and then manually eye ball the version number. Does any of you have a better system?

[Belfong]

I found Packal.org which seems to provide such a service, unfortunately, only Spotify mini is using Packal. The rest of the workflow does not seem to have a way to update itself, except manually checking the forum.. 

[deanishe]

Packal is mostly dead, I’m afraid. It is unmaintained and the updater isn’t compatible with Alfred 3.

 

Many workflows include their own automatic updaters, and will let you know when a new version is available.

[Belfong]

Thank you. Looks like I need to remove the Packal Update from my Alfred Workflow then. 

[xilopaint]

On 4/1/2019 at 10:13 PM, Belfong said:

Hi there... this may be a newbie question - is there an easier way to keep all workflows updated when the author made new changes? I have Things, Spotify mini player, Cardhop, Keyboard Maestro workflows in Alfred and I have no checked whether these have been updated recently. The only way I can think of checking if they were updated is to come to the forum, look for the thread and then manually eye ball the version number. Does any of you have a better system?

 

What's your Things workflow?

[Belfong]

On 4/3/2019 at 11:50 AM, xilopaint said:

 

What's your Things workflow?

I am using the Things workflow built by Arthur Pinheiro.

 

[xilopaint]

Things and Spotify Mini Player have auto-update features so you don't need to worry about checking the forum for updates. Don't know about the other workflows you mentioned.

[mperezi]

On 4/2/2019 at 8:18 AM, deanishe said:

Packal is mostly dead, I’m afraid. It is unmaintained and the updater isn’t compatible with Alfred 3.

 

Many workflows include their own automatic updaters, and will let you know when a new version is available.

 

I'm curious. Can you point to any examples?

[deanishe]

3 hours ago, mperezi said:

I'm curious. Can you point to any examples?

 

Many of these workflows use the library's built-in updater.

[xilopaint]

5 minutes ago, deanishe said:

 

Many of these workflows use the library's built-in updater.

 

I got very frustrated at Alfred 4 release as it hasn't addressed my expectation regarding a built-in update solution. Both Alfred-Workflow and OneUpdater are great on this, but they are unknown for most developers. An official repository + update feature are major demands in the community for years.

[deanishe]

1 minute ago, xilopaint said:

An official repository + update feature are major demands in the community for years.

 

Yeah. Every other app that makes heavy use of plugins also has a mechanism for updating them. People often have dozens or scores of workflows. You can't manage that by hand. It's tedious to implement the user interface around library update mechanisms in every workflow, and OneUpdater doesn't have the smoothest UX.

 

There's a new Export Metadata… feature that exports a JSON file containing description etc. and a downloadurl.

 

Hopefully, this is the start of a move towards a real, built-in updater. It should certainly help with building indexers for workflow discovery.