I'd also like a javascript merge script for local development/testing using npm start.
But I think that should be relatively easy using npm watch.

I'd also like a javascript merge script for local development/testing using npm start. But I think that should be relatively easy using npm watch.

Or you could use jekyll serve

Or you could use jekyll serve

Oh, cool. I didn't know jekyll could run standalone, figured it was just some preprocessor language for GitHub pages.
...too bad it doesn't just work :-(

$ jekyll serve
Configuration file: /home/richard/src/BangleApps/_config.yml
jekyll 3.8.6 | Error:  The jekyll-theme-minimal theme could not be found.
...

So it looks like it requires you to also figure out/setup jekyll/ruby, instead of just sticking with npm/javascript which we already use for everything else.

But I guess this works fine for people using GitHub pages, and if we go this way I'd be happy to look into making it work locally with just npm.

Some bikeshedding: I would prefer the per-app files being named app.json, just makes more sense to me to combine several app.jsons into one big apps.json.

Thanks! So actually everything can be handled with the {%- assign apps = site.static_files | where: "name", "metadata.json" -%} ... code in apps.json?

I'll have to think about this as it's quite a big change, but it definitely seems to tidy things up a lot.

I'm in two minds about metadata.json - while I like app.json it's a bit confusing for widgets/etc, so probably keeping with what's here is better

I like @adamschmalhofer's solution very much.

I had another idea:

It would also be solvable via an additional branch ( e.g. gh-pages).
With every commit the apps.json is rebuilt via actions and merged with the commit into the branch gh-pages.

You can find an example here: https://github.com/BartS23/BangleApps/blob/master/.github/workflows/PreparePages.yml

Both solutions also have the possibility to leave the existing apps.json unchanged and only use the app.json/metadata.json for new apps.

Thanks for keeping this up to date!

I just posted a question about this on the forum to see what those outside of GitHub think: http://forum.espruino.com/conversations/372018/

Ok, so everyone seems to think this is a great idea - let's merge!

I assume you have some kind of script/tool to update the metadata based on the latest apps.json changes? Please could you run it one more time and then I'll merge this in :)

Updated. Looking forward to it being merged \o/.

Excellent - thanks!

@adamschmalhofer is it possible that when you ran your script, you pulled apps.json from banglejs.com/apps (which would have been out of date)? I'm seeing a few cases where apps didn't have metadata.json files or they are out of date

Actually there was some odd stuff that had gone on - not sure how, but I think it's all fixed now!