+15

Official Package Control

13 years ago • updated by 11 years ago • 3

I'm beginning to think that Sublime Text should have its own, officially supported package discovery/management tool which comes pre-installed.

Now, don't get me wrong -- the Package Control plugin is fantastic, but I think that already with ~80 packages in the system, it needs an overhaul. I don't see it scaling well beyond its current position. The problem is not with wbond's work on it, but that he's working within the confines placed on 3rd-party-devs. The command palette is a cool feature, but it's not the best tool for browsing a large number of packages to install. Since it brings so much value to ST2 and unlocks so much useful functionality of the editor, I think it really belongs as a built-in and deserves official support. Currently, telling people "go to this site, and copy that big strange string of python and paste it into the console" isn't a nice introduction to ST2.

Things which I'd like to see in it:
- being able to categorise packages would be a great start
- see usage statistics, order by 'most popular', 'newest', etc.
- integrated display of readme files
- being able to install specific versions of a package (as defined by tags)

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13 years ago

From forum post: http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3718

13 years ago

I mostly agree, but bundling a package manager with a whole new GUI is not the best solution.

What we need is a website where all packages can be browsed, maintained by owners themselves, and maybe a simple command-line utility to install from a git repo or .zip/tar file.

Then if you want to get fancy you can use a registered extension (.sublime-package) or protocol (sublime-install://) that allows one-click installs. Following something along the lines of textmate where myplugin.sublime-package would be just a zipped folder and auto-installable would be nice.

11 years ago

I also feel that the package manager should be added by default. And if they could also give it an upgrade, that would be so awesome. Currently when getting sublime on a new installation (or for people who are just getting started), getting the package manager and add the plugins feels a bit too old-school to me. Why not have it behave like in Brackets. There you can just see a list of plugins you might want and click install. Way faster then the package manager in Sublime. Also, getting package updates like this would be way easier too.

I like using Sublime and currently Brackets feels a bit too slow for me, but i can see that grow beyond sublime cause some stuff just feel way more user-friendly to me. I'm not really into using the command prompt or similar features of my OS or apps, so i tend to look for stuff that has a GUI and features a more modern approach to work with or extend its capabilities.

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