Packal: Workflow and Theme Repository

[deanishe]

Caching is playing up again. There was an error on upload. I think it worked the second time, but there's no way of knowing because Packal is showing me old data from the cache

[rice.shawn]

Just cleared everything manually. Did that help it out?

[deanishe]

It did, thanks. As I suspected, Packal had lost the new icon. Everything seems to be fine now. Ta!

[rice.shawn]

Something has appeared recently in which the filesystem randomly loses icons. I've taken to just downloading the workflow and re-uploading the icon sitting in there to fix it. I have no clue as to why it's happening, though.

 

That's a lie, actually, I have several ideas, but I haven't had time to rule any of them out. I'm hoping that, in the next couple of month, I'll get some time to redo the backend and a few other things that will make it so that some of the "fixes" that I've done (read: hacks) can be sorted out into reliably.

[guiguan]

Hi Shawn,

 

I have submitted a new version on Packal for my workflow (Uni Call). I did receive the confirmation email from your Packal bot, and the status on admin page also says `Published`. However, my workflow page on Packal still displays the old information with a broken icon.

 

Any idea?

 

Best regards,

Guan

[rice.shawn]

I'm not exactly sure what happened, but the site started to do things like that a little while ago. I've been just going on and fixing it manually. Something must have happened when I upgraded some module (the Packal site is a Drupal 7 installation).

 

Over the last few weeks, however, I've been experimenting with rewriting the site from the ground-up in ways that will make any of these issues moot.

 

For now, I went in and re-uploaded the icon and flushed the caches, so everything should look right.

 

Sorry about the bugs.

[rice.shawn]

I've added a category to Packal to help track workflows that offer Alfred Remote functionality. Here is the category: http://www.packal.org/tags/alfred-remote.

 

So, when you add your workflows to Packal, make sure that you check that box if you want it included there.

[gabamnml]

Any news about analytics of own workflows in packal dashboard?

[rice.shawn]

Any news about analytics of own workflows in packal dashboard?

 

Not yet. I'm stuck between rewriting Packal, writing Alphred (new PHP library), and writing a dissertation. The latter needs to take priority. But the other two seem to grab my time. Still, because of the diss, I can't make any time promises.

[etm001]

Hi,

 

When I execute 'packal' via Alfred and select to update packages, my firewall immediately reports a number of outbound connection attempts. Destination sites have included google.com, maps.google.com, and the Android marketplace. Can anyone shed light on what's happening?

 

Otherwise, Packal is great!

[rice.shawn]

Packal tries a number of ways to ping Google to check to see if there is an active Internet connection. If there isn't one, then it offers different options. It should also try to reach out to Github because Packal pushes its archive onto GH. But there is nothing in the code that would make it try to reach the Android Marketplace or maps.google.com. My only guesses are that your firewall is misidentifying the google homepage with either of those based on IPs (this is just a thought) or that another service is hitting those at a similar time because there is nothing in the code that reaches to either of those places.

[Florian]

Hey Shawn,

I've been having this issue with the updater (either graphical or through the alfred workflow): it won't update Colors from 2.0.0 to 2.0.1

Any idea what i can do?

[madvas]

Packal is great! But I miss a lot ability to rate workflows/themes. So people can see "Top rated" or "Most downloaded" items, and therefore discover best workflows super quickly. 
Anyways, very nice job 

[xilopaint]

Packal is great! But I miss a lot ability to rate workflows/themes. So people can see "Top rated" or "Most downloaded" items, and therefore discover best workflows super quickly. 

Anyways, very nice job 

 

+1 for this request.

[Florian]

Weird update in Packal : it proposes to revert the "install app" workflow rather than update...

 

[rice.shawn]

It's some weirdness with the metadata. I promise you that it will never actually "downgrade" a workflow because it will always get the most recent copy from the github repo. There's just a weird metadata mismatch between the master manifest and workflow right now that might sort itself out (based on a periodic cron job that does a correction for this problem).

 

The problem actually comes from when workflow authors update the workflow and then go back and update the workflow version because updating the text fields doesn't queue the expensive backend processing on the server that re-packages the workflows and re-builds the manifest files.

 

Hopefully I'll be able to roll-out the newer version of Packal sometime soon that will take care of these problems, but, for now, it's nothing to worry about. It's just annoying.

[xilopaint]

It's some weirdness with the metadata. I promise you that it will never actually "downgrade" a workflow because it will always get the most recent copy from the github repo. There's just a weird metadata mismatch between the master manifest and workflow right now that might sort itself out (based on a periodic cron job that does a correction for this problem).

 

The problem actually comes from when workflow authors update the workflow and then go back and update the workflow version because updating the text fields doesn't queue the expensive backend processing on the server that re-packages the workflows and re-builds the manifest files.

 

Hopefully I'll be able to roll-out the newer version of Packal sometime soon that will take care of these problems, but, for now, it's nothing to worry about. It's just annoying.

 

Any news about the fix for the issue?

 

[homever]

In the El Capitan GM, packal updater displays: GUI Not Available. Please come up with a fix, thanks!

And like upstairs, one particular workflow is always listed in the to-be-updated even if I have already installed the latest version.

Edited September 12, 2015 by homever

[xilopaint]

I can't update the description of my workflow in Packal. Is it a known issue?

[rice.shawn]

I can't update the description of my workflow in Packal. Is it a known issue?

 

I force-cleared the caches, so they should be fine. Let me know if they're not.

[cands]

Any news about the fix for the issue?

 

 

 

Thanks for a great service that really makes it much easier to maintain Alfred. I'm also experiencing this problem. It would not really be an issue if it's just the metadata. However, for me when Packal has updated all workflows (currently 5 of mine have this problem) they are still listed as requiring to be updated, with the same version information as before the update. So these workflows are always listed as "Updates available. There are 5 updates pending", and I do not know whether an update is necessary or not. Would be great if this could be fixed.

[Marcin Bogdanowicz]

great but when will you do this more accessible for non-specialist like me who has happened to cook up a few Alfred workflows so far but each time I have had to post them by some dropbox and such...

[deanishe]

If you can make and export a workflow, uploading it to Packal should be well within your capabilities. You only have to fill out a web form.

[Marcin Bogdanowicz]

For example - there should be some link to this Packal in Alfred app itself (in section "Workflows" or in some other readily visible and available place), also link preferably creating instantaneously new project on the Packal.

[Marcin Bogdanowicz]

my answer to any objections will always be the same - do you want to have workflows from ordinary Alfred users? Then move your lazy bones and/or do not create some water-tight community of Packals. End of story.