Mechanic

Mechanic provides an interface in RoboFont for installing and updating extensions hosted on GitHub.

https://github.com/jackjennings/Mechanic

Requirements

Mechanic requires RoboFont 1.3 or greater.

Installation

Double click Mechanic.roboFontExt.

Features

• Browse and install extensions from a list of publicly available extensions
• Checks for updates of configured extensions on startup (optional)
• Conditionally ignore individual extensions from being updated
• Optionally ignore small updates on startup
• Manually check for updates of configured extensions
• Register extensions to the public extension registry

Extension Registry

Currently, Mechanic manages the following extensions:

• Adjust Metrics by Font Bureau (David Jonathan Ross)
• Arrange Windows by Frederik Berlaen
• Bounding Tool by Font Bureau (David Jonathan Ross)
• Feature Preview by Frederik Berlaen
• Glif Viewer by Frederik Berlaen
• Glyph Select by Font Bureau (David Jonathan Ross)
• Groups2Features by Frederik Berlaen
• Layer Preview by Frederik Berlaen
• Mechanic by Jack Jennings
• Outliner by Frederik Berlaen
• Overlay UFOs by Font Bureau (David Jonathan Ross)
• Pixel Tool by Frederik Berlaen
• Plum by Jack Jennings
• Ramsay St. by Frederik Berlaen
• Random Word Generator by Font Bureau (David Jonathan Ross)
• Replicant by Jack Jennings
• RoboToDo by Jack Jennings
• Scaling Edit Tool by Timo Klaavo
• send2twitter by Frederik Berlaen
• Shape Tool by Frederik Berlaen
• ShowDelta by Font Bureau (David Jonathan Ross)
• SidebearingsEQ by Franz Heidl
• Tiny Draw Bot by Frederik Berlaen
• Type Cooker by TypeMedia

Mechanic for Developers

If you are already hosting your code on GitHub, support for mechanic is easy to add to your existing extensions. You can version your extension in two ways, depending on how your repository is set up: with git tags, or through info.plist.

Either way:

• Mechanic assumes that you are releasing on the master branch.
• Mechanic recognizes major, minor, and patch level versions, X.Y.Z. Patch level is optional.

Once you have added the required keys to your info.plist file, you can register your extension from within the Mechanic interface in RoboFont.

Versioning with Tags (recommended)

If you only have a single extension in your repository, using tags is the best way to organize your releases. Tagging allows you to specify a single, authoritative commit for each version of your extension.

In order for Mechanic to recognize your extension, add a repository key to your info.plist file:

	<key>repository</key>
	<string>username/Repository</string>

• repository should contain your username and the name of the repository that your extension is stored in (e.g. jackjennings/Mechanic).

When checking a local extension's version against a repository, Mechanic will search your repository's tags for the latest version number. When you want to release a new version of your extension, tag the specific commit with a incremented version number. From the command line, your first release might look like:

	git tag -a 0.1 -m "Release version 0.1"
	git push origin master --tags

Because Mechanic checks the locally installed extension's plist against your git tags, you'll need to manually ensure that the version in your info.plist matches your release's tagged version.

When versioning with tags, Mechanic installs the first RoboFont extension that it finds in your repository. If there's more than one, it will try to guess which is the correct extension based on it's filename. If you need to have more than one extension in your repository, consider versioning with info.plist.

Versioning with info.plist

You can also version your extension using only the key found in info.plist.

Add the standard repository key to your info.plist, along with an extensionPath key.

	<key>repository</key>
	<string>username/Repository</string>
	<key>extensionPath</key>
	<string>path/to/Extension.roboFontExt</string>

• repository should contain your username and the name of the repository that your extension is stored in (e.g. jackjennings/Mechanic).

• extensionPath should contain the path to your extension, relative to the root of your repository (e.g. ext/myExtension/myExtension.roboFontExt)

Mechanic will download the info.plist file that is contained in the extension specified in extensionPath when checking for updates.