[request] Separate plugin demo sites

[Mat]

@Jeremy

Would it be possible to auto-generate a wiki per plugin for the sites <plugin>.tiddlywiki.com or some such?

Problem:

People evaluating if TW would solve their needs are unlikely to first take the time to learn TW enough to be able to install plugins. If they even at all understand there IS such a plugin. It would be very useful to be able to refer them directly to a demo.

But it's a problem also for experienced users: Trying out a plugin means you must install it. It possibly even means you must first get an empty TW to install it in, because you don't want to test it in your main wiki.  Also consider that during the dev phase of a plugin we often need people to test it.

So...

is it possible to "auto-generate" wiki+plugin to some place on tiddlywiki.com?

Some plugins need a populated wiki for the user to test it. So there could be an extra plugin that follows along in the generation, with a set of dummy tiddlers . As new plugins are developed, this plugin could be gradually populated on a per-need basis. Besides, the community could already now benefit from such a dummy plugin so we have a common set of tiddlers to try things on and to refer to. It would probably include the various dummy tids we have on tiddlywiki.com, i.e tiddlers that have the "week days" and the data used to demo the different sorting operators.

<:-)

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Mat

That’s all true. As I may have said elsewhere, the limitation on building more editions as part of tiddlywiki.com is the duration of the build process; it’s already 10 minutes which can be highly inconvenient. So we need to optimise the build process before adding too many more editions.

Best wishes

Jeremy

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[Mat]

So it's not just possible to "automate it" and click "run" before going to bed? (As you can tell, I don't know what the build process encompasses.)

Regardless, I thought the "dummy plugin" idea was pretty neat for a shared test set. Currently people invent all kinds of generic names that cause confusion on the boards when asking for help. So, is that something that we could have an official plugin for? Actually, it probably couldn't be a plugin because the tiddlers need to be separate. Maybe tiddlywiki.com could tag a set of tiddlers that users can DnD into their wikis? Or if adding an extra tag is not desirable then this request for an "arbitrary filter pill handle" might be an an option.

<:-)

[PMario]

Hi Mat,

If you want 1 wiki per plugin, you basically need 1 edition per plugin. I do this with wikilabs.

see the repo: https://github.com/wikilabs/editions

Building these editions needs about 30 seconds, where starting node created the biggest delay.

My plugins are in a different repo. So I can edit several of them at the same time. ... if it is needed.

I also do have 1 additional xxx-server edition, that lets me test with localhost.

-mario

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Mat

I'd missed this:

So there could be an extra plugin that follows along in the generation, with a set of dummy tiddlers . As new plugins are developed, this plugin could be gradually populated on a per-need basis. Besides, the community could already now benefit from such a dummy plugin so we have a common set of tiddlers to try things on and to refer to. It would probably include the various dummy tids we have on tiddlywiki.com, i.e tiddlers that have the "week days" and the data used to demo the different sorting operators.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Populated by whom? How? What problem does this part solve?

Best wishes

Jeremy

--

Jeremy Ruston

jer...@jermolene.com

https://jermolene.com

On 2 May 2020, at 16:25, Mat <matia...@gmail.com> wrote:



So it's not just possible to "automate it" and click "run" before going to bed? (As you can tell, I don't know what the build process encompasses.)

Regardless, I thought the "dummy plugin" idea was pretty neat for a shared test set. Currently people invent all kinds of generic names that cause confusion on the boards when asking for help. So, is that something that we could have an official plugin for? Actually, it probably couldn't be a plugin because the tiddlers need to be separate. Maybe tiddlywiki.com could tag a set of tiddlers that users can DnD into their wikis? Or if adding an extra tag is not desirable then this request for an "arbitrary filter pill handle" might be an an option.

<:-)

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[Mat]

PMario, thanks for input. What I see looks good but I'm not qualified to tell. From what I understand, your setup to be very different from the TW repo.

<:-)

[PMario]

On Saturday, May 2, 2020 at 9:04:21 PM UTC+2, Mat wrote:

PMario, thanks for input. What I see looks good but I'm not qualified to tell. From what I understand, your setup to be very different from the TW repo.

Not really. We use a very similar mechanism for TW5.com and TW5.com-server.

-m

[Mat]

Jeremy Ruston wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean here. Populated by whom? How? What problem does this part solve?

Populated with "sample tiddlers". The idea is to have a set of tiddlers that we use for testing and examples. For the OP, i.e "could we make plugin editions where people can try out the plugin" the purpose would be so people had something to try the plugin on because some plugins require sample tiddlers in order to "run". So, the idea is a ready made set of dummy tiddlers. I figure tiddlywiki.com already has several of these, e.g the tiddler containing the weekdays that is used in some operator docs.

Also, on the boards people ask questions but they are often confusing: sometimes becuase of the one asking and sometimes because of the one trying to understand. Some people wonder "what does foobar mean?" some people say they want to "sort by x, y, z" not stating if those are tiddler titles or field names or fileld values. If there's a plugin with sample "dummy tiddlers" that people use for their demos and their examples we'd have a common reference that might avoid some confusions. It would also simplify for people so they don't have to create their own dummy data which can be slow if one wants to demo, say, a ToC.

<:-)

[Mat]

PMario wrote:

Not really. We use a very similar mechanism for TW5.com and TW5.com-server.

OK, so I take it that it's something else that causes the 10 build process duration for tiddlywiki.com then, making building of editions too cumbersome.

<:-)

[PMario]

The build process is done by a CI / CD system, which is linked to github. ...

Depending on the load the system has, it can be several minutes, until the process is started. ...

Once the process starts, it needs to install a specific VM-like build system.

Then it starts to build the different editions.

After the editions are built, they need to be pushed back as a PR to github.

So until everything is compiled, and published it should be easy to use 10 minutes.

... But as Jeremy wrote, there should be some possibilities to improve the build speed.

-mario

[PMario]

On Saturday, May 2, 2020 at 10:59:00 PM UTC+2, PMario wrote:

...

So until everything is compiled, and published it should be easy to use 10 minutes.

... But as Jeremy wrote, there should be some possibilities to improve the build speed.

I use multiple CPU processes, that are able to build editions in parallel. ... Something similar should be possible for TW too. 

But it would need a bit of tweaking, because I don't do any CPU checks and how may processes are possible. So it uses 100% of CPU time, most of the time.

-m