TL;DR: Will wbond’s package manager (or a variant thereof) be implemented as a core feature of ST2 before the final release?
As I was reading these forums as I always try to do once a week, I noticed the topic named “Deprecated Addons”. In it the TS asks:
To which wbond responds with:
[quote=“wbond”]I’ve had the intention for a while to create a detail page for packages on the Community Packages list that will allow users to leave comments, in addition to some other things. This could potentially help the issue raised here.
Unfortunately I’ve run into the issue that my various obligations to work, family and the few different open source projects I run has left me with little free time to explore new functionality. Perhaps in the next month or so I can work on getting the community package site onto github so that others can contribute.[/quote]
Now let me start by saying that I have the utmost respect for the work wbond has done for this community and the ease with which we install new plugins these days, compared to a few months ago where we constantly had to clone repositories or copy/paste plugins from these forums. He deserves all the credits he gets and I hope people will use the donate button on his page to send him some money for his hard work.
Having said that. Package Manager has become pretty much a must-have for specific features that are obviously outside of the scope of the core features that make up Sublime Text 2. I don’t know many people who don’t use package manager so almost always after installing a fresh copy of ST2, the first thing people do is install the package manager.
I feel that having such a key feature of this product being developed by an outside developer who is not part of the core development team (although there is only one core developer at the moment, jon) makes this less than an ideal situation.
I believe the above quote is the main reason why the package manager should be implemented in the application itself and not be handled by a third party. I can totally understand the reasons why wbond is strapped on time, and I would do the same if I where in the same situation, I also have the greatest respect for how the package manager works in sublime, it really works as simple as it can be.
At the same time, I worry that wbond has to work with the API jon opens up for the public to work with ST2. That, plus the fact that we pay jon for his hard work, but not to wbond (unless we donate), which makes the work wbond does more of a “nice to do for the community project” and jon’s application a “they pay me, they can expect certain results project”.
All this is to say:
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How do other people on these forums think about this?
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How do Jon and Wbond think about this?
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Are there any steps being taken to mitigate this problem (even if it isn’t a problem at the moment)?
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Can we expect some big announcement before the final release of V2?*
*[size=85]with the work on the new website, and the lack of new features for the past few weeks, I suspect the final version is imminent, so I don’t expect this to happen, but it would still be nice.[/size]