A little update

yak
(Will Pearson) #1

Hey @yak_testers, it’s been a little while since I’ve been in touch, sorry for that!

This week’s Rhino WIP release (3rd April 2018) includes a few new things that I wanted to mention…

  • Package Manager UI (thanks @Trav!). Try the _TestPackageManager command.
  • Support for creating packages from RhinoCommon plug-ins (see the guide) or anything else, for that matter (but pre-population of manifest.yml is only working for Grasshopper assemblies and RhinoCommon-based Rhino plug-ins, so far)
  • Weaverbird has been downloaded >1800 times since @piac started distributing it via Yak. Users can download a .gh file that contains Weaverbird components and Yak handles the rest via Package Restore
  • Grasshopper loads .ghpy and .ghuser files that are installed via Yak
  • Bug fixes :cricket:

I’m planning to demo this stuff next month at Shape to Fabrication.

I’m currently working on developer workflows and automation, i.e. how to set up a simple plug-in project in a git repository with CI that automatically publishes pre-release versions of the plug-in for general consumption.

Please get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions!

(Nathan 'jesterKing' Letwory) #2

I uploaded my personal SketchPad plug-in that I use to create quick test commands. Worked fine.

#3

Oh man, that would have made all those bending-active workshops day one a bliss :pray:

(David Rutten) #4

If teachers are going to use Yak to distribute course material to their students, is that going to flood the repo with stuff that is useless for everyone else?

#5

That is a very good point!

(Giulio Piacentino) #6

Hopefully teachers teach useful stuff!

#7

I suppose this opens up a larger concern of what flooding the repo might actually involve, both in terms of user experience and the technical issues of hosting etc. The Dynamo package manager is pretty bloated with all sorts of crap for instance, but does actually work quite well (one simply searches for packages ala Sublime Text etc, without it auto-installing on the fly).

(Will Pearson) #8

My hope is that the main package repository won’t need much moderation, like rubygems or npm or, indeed, the Dynamo package manager. In the future it will be possible to host your own package repo (a feature much requested by offices), so maybe schools can go that route to provide an “approved” list of packages for users to pick from.

A couple of other options:

  • Like @piac has done with Weaverbird, you could distribute a Grasshopper definition that triggers package restore for the packages that your workshop/lesson requires
  • Package “groups” (coming soon™️)