Sublime Forum

Badly needed: granular exclusion of package files

#1

ST badly needs a more granular exclusion system that allows individual package files (snippets, completions, themes etc.) to be ignored. As it stands, you can change ST to fit you perfectly but it’s far easier to change yourself to fit ST. That’s an undesirable state of affairs for all but the most flexible of programmers (i.e. not many of us).

Take, for a simple example, the default C++ snippets. I prefer my opening braces on the same line as the control statement so I can either delete the snippets, remake them in User and then have duplicates respawn at a later update (coincidentally also my least favourite part of System Shock 2) or I can edit the snippets and have them overwritten. Stuff like that kinda defeats the whole point of having a first rate customisation system.

It’s not just default snippets either though. If I want to replace my default PHP completions list with the excellent AndyPHP completions package then I’ll end up with duplicates every time the default completions return. Third party packages also often contain menu items that I don’t necessarily want or that I’d prefer to edit in some way but once again there’s only the choice between later duplication and later deletion.

Basically, although the customisation system is great and very, well, customisable, implementation issues are wasting a lot of its value for the hackers who really want to get down and dirty with ST.

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#2

I haven’t tried this and I’m not suggesting it as a complete solution, but:
we could create a folder, say MyC++ (or AndyPHP :wink: ), copy everything that we want to keep (including the syntax file) from the C++ folder to this new folder. We can then disable C++ or PHP. This way, the old folders will continue to update, but this won’t interfere with our own preferences.

Later, we could use file (WinMerge) or folder comparison apps to see if there have been any updates (in the original folders) that we wish to transfer over. This has the added benefit of enabling us to decide which changes we wish to adopt, and which to ignore.

Just an idea :smile:

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#3

[quote=“agibsonsw”]I haven’t tried this and I’m not suggesting it as a complete solution, but:
we could create a folder, say MyC++ (or AndyPHP :wink: ), copy everything that we want to keep (including the syntax file) from the C++ folder to this new folder. We can then disable C++ or PHP. This way, the old folders will continue to update, but this won’t interfere with our own preferences.

Later, we could use file (WinMerge) or folder comparison apps to see if there have been any updates (in the original folders) that we wish to transfer over. This has the added benefit of enabling us to decide which changes we wish to adopt, and which to ignore.

Just an idea :smile:[/quote]

This is along the same lines as I’ve been thinking except that I hadn’t considered making my own packages for it which is a good idea. At the moment I’ve just disabled automatic updates for ST and Package Control so I’m effectively frozen in time. I was planning to do a merge after manually updating every now and again but the cost of maintaining control is very high for a text editor (which, in my eyes, should be a mostly “configure and forget” affair).

Thanks for the suggestion! I’d still really like to see this implemented within ST though.

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