Plans for Vicinae extensions store?

[subutux]

Hi

Fantastic tool and great developer experience!

I’m working on some extensions myself and would be great if there is a separate extension store just for Vicinae/Linux specific extensions.

For example, I’m working on an extension for managing Bluetooth and network connections using dbus. Not something that fits the Raycast store.

Are there any plans for this?

Thanks for the great tool!

[aurelleb]

Yes, I really want to have a separate Vicinae store! This will come eventually, although right now there are more important matters to handle first.

[0xhckr]

I'm dropping my name here expressing interest! I've got tons of experience in building websites and serving content so this feels right up my alley (C++ haunts my nightmares) (not really) (maybe kinda)

[aurelleb]

(C++ haunts my nightmares) (not really) (maybe kinda)

it doesn't have to, it's actually not that bad :) But yeah noted, I'm doing web dev for a living myself but help will definitely be needed!

[schromp]

I would propose the following:

You can add repositories in vicinae store settings.
Repositories can just be git repos which have multiple directories containing extensions.
Then when searching in the vicinae store you have tags to differentiate repositories and can install extensions from these repos.

A default repository could be a vicinaehq managed one

[aurelleb]

Yeah sure, but that means every repo has to run some kind of CI which makes it significantly less practical imo. That also means Vicinae would have to make sure every git URL references a repository with such a build process in place.

That's why having one general community-vetted repo under vicinaehq could be enough (we can easily deal with the build process with only one repo).

And for standalone extensions that for any reason can't belong to the main repo, people can simply install them manually.

[0xhckr]

the repository could also just be a specific structure that then references additional github repositories in a json or yaml format. Ideally we also make sure that people can target specific versions to install by targetting various github tags or specific commit IDs

[aurelleb]

We also need to keep in mind that we don't want to make it too easy for anyone to push a new version of an extension without it being properly vetted by a trusted contributor. It's totally fine for standalone repositories where users have to install the extension by themselves, but not for a store that will directly integrate with the launcher.

I don't think referencing external repositories could fit that goal, as we can't ensure a given release hasn't been tampered with at some point in time.

[schromp]

i agree the official repo shouldnt import anything but i would still like the possibility to easily install things from other repositories.
If we never settle on anything that wouldnt be too bad for me because we can still do it through nix though.
A official repo is more important either way. :)

[0xhckr]

In my given use case, it would also be useful for companies to create their own repos to allow their employees to find all the extensions they need to have installed on their work systems.
(I know, what company is out here forcing their employees to run Linux - I'm working on it :P)

[aurelleb]

so I thought about this a little bit more.

I want to focus on having a global vicinae store first given how fast the community is growing it's what's going to bring the most value. We already have a bunch of very sick extensions and most people don't know about them!

Private store/repositories will also be worked on but later.

As initially discussed the global store will basically be backed by a monorepo under this organization.

Every update, a CI job will build and generate a static list of available extensions and a centralized server will distribute the extensions, as Raycast does with their store.

This will also allow us to count downloads, rank extensions by popularity, and all sorts of cool stuff.

[aurelleb]

for those who might have missed it, the global store is now a thing in v0.16.0

[0xhckr]

Yeah I can already feel how much more powerful Vicinae feels having installed some Linux-specific extensions. I quite literally no longer have a Mac because of Vicinae.

[aurelleb]

that's amazing to hear!