When running on node, disabling the Filesystem plugin has really nasty effects

[Michael Borgwardt]

So this just cost me about 3 hours and I was really lucky to lose only a few changes to tiddlers.

The plugin is described as "Synchronise changes to the local filesystem" so I thought it had something to do with running TW locally as a single file. But it's actually the mechanism that the node server uses to save tiddlers.

The insidious thing is that it only becomes effective the next time the server is restarted - which could be months after you made the change in the settings and have forgotten about it completely. And then you still don't notice anything wrong because the server keeps changes in memory - until you restart it the next time and all changes in between are lost!

I think it would be a good idea at minimum to change the plugin description, or even make it impossible to disable.

[PMario]

On Wednesday, September 23, 2020 at 1:19:42 PM UTC+2, Michael Borgwardt wrote:

I think it would be a good idea at minimum to change the plugin description, or even make it impossible to disable.

Hi Michael,

Which exact text would have helped you to avoid the problem. I'll create a pull-request, if you come up with a good text.

The same is true for the TiddlyWeb plugin. Filesystem and TiddlyWeb always work together at the moment.

-mario

[bra...@gmail.com]

PMario schrieb am Mittwoch, 23. September 2020 um 19:49:27 UTC+2:

Which exact text would have helped you to avoid the problem. I'll create a pull-request, if you come up with a good text.

Thanks! A clearer description would be "Synchronize changes from the node.js server to its local filesystem"

 

The same is true for the TiddlyWeb plugin. Filesystem and TiddlyWeb always work together at the moment.

Good point. There, maybe the text could be "Synchronize changes from the browser to the TW5 (node.js) or TiddlyWeb server"

[PMario]

Hi,

I did create a PR with the new description. https://github.com/Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5/pull/4865

-mario

[dieg...@gmail.com]

Sorry if this is obvious, but is there is a reason for this to be a plugin that can be disabled?

[Cade Roux]

This is true about needing the filesystem plugin in nodejs even if not serving out over web but just using the command-line.

First step I do after --init is to change the tiddlywiki.info file to add the plugin.

The only use case would be if you do want changes to be kind of ephemeral until it's restarted

Cade

[PMario]

At Michael, The PR has been merged.  So we hope that it helps others.

Thx for letting us know!

mario

[Joshua Fontany]

You can call the "--build" command, and Node will build a stand-alone .html file out of a node-TW-folder. In the case of true stand-alone wikis (as demos, etc), you do NOT want those plugins included, or you would get big red errors upon opening the file.

Best,
Joshua F