I’m busy moving my addons folder from Dropbox to OneDrive, it’s all going well apart from two stacks, both from S4S: Spacer & Toggle.
OneDribve won’t allow them to sync due to a naming convention problem, see screenshot.
I’m wondering if anyone else has hit this and if anyone has worked out a solution.
The spacer stack is named as S4S-spacer.stack which seems OK for normal naming conventions. Do OD provide any more information about what specifically is wrong?
It looks like the stacks file S4S-Toggle.stack if you “show package content” (after right-clicking) Go into the Contents>Resourses directory there is a file called .css$/.css. Any file that starts with a . is a hidden file on macOS or any Unix based system.
Does OneDrive not allow hidden files?
That would give problems for a lot of Unix style files. Git uses the . to hide internal stuff aswell.
It’s the / not the ..
Not allowed:
" * : < > ? / \ |
Not sure why @willwood has those hidden file names?
UPDATE: I’ve used the spacer stack a lot in projects over the years, and after having to remove it from my addons folder so I could sync said folder over OneDrive working on older projects became a total PITA, as I had to go thru and replace the now missing spacer stack.
So, I decided to break open the Spacer stack and remove the offending hidden file called .css$/.css and add the stack to my folder on OneDrive.
Good news is it worked, OneDrive no longer throws a fit over the stack.
Better news is existing instances of the stack work!
Bad news you all the settings for the stack are now missing, so I’m guessing that file had something to do with getting the settings to appear. What this means is you can’t add new instances of the stack to projects as you’ve no settings. But, if like me you have hundreds of instances of this stack over loads of projects, it does at least mean you no longer have to find and replace them with something else.
Not sure if @willwood is aware of this “issue”, and or is able to fix it. Understandable if not, as it is quite a unique issue.
That’ll be the cryptocurrency miner. Got to fund these free stacks for you somehow!
Honestly, I have no idea what the significance of these hidden .css$/.css files are or where they have originated from. I wish I could give a concise answer, but I can’t.
Nobody has ever emailed me to raise any concerns about hidden files in RapidWeaver addons or problems with syncing them over cloud file sharing services. I’ve never had an issue with people wanting to sync free or paid addons in the cloud, if they promise to keep them for their own use.
I can tell you that Spacer was the first stack I ever released. It came out pretty-much the same week Stacks v1 hit the market. We must be getting close towards a decade, if we haven’t surpassed that milestone already. That makes Spacer possibly the oldest addon stack still in development.
In that time I have had periods when the stacks were managed via version control systems like BitBucket and GitHub. I know these sometimes introduce verbose hidden files.
I have also gone-between a couple of code editors in that time - TextWrangler, Espresso, Sublime, Atom and VS Code. It’s possible that if the stack was opened as a ‘project’ in one of these editors, some hidden files may have sneaked in. Though I doubt it.
We definitely do not store any data or settings in hidden files. The data you enter in Stacks / RapidWeaver is all stored within the project file. Never the stack. Deleting hidden files should not cause any problems.
I don’t have RapidWeaver or Spacer in front of me right now. If you have more details to email me like version numbers, precise error messages from OneCloud or how these hidden files are exposed, I can take a look and perhaps make modifications for a future update.
Small donations would be happily received and will naturally escalate the priority this matter receives! ;-)
Hi, Will, that the file is hidden is not relevant really, it’s the / in the file name. One Drive won’t allow files with / in the name. Two of your stacks have a / in their file name: Spacer and Toggle. The file in question, css$/.css contains css, the spacer stacks starts off with lots css relating to “VH”, so I’m guessing the file is still used as you only recently introduced VH as a spacer stack measurement.
A Goog,e on the file name returns results mentioning a “CSS Loader”.
I’m not the only one to see this problem, I’ve spoken with a few OneDrive users that have hit it, so it’s a standard issue. It’s understandable that you haven’t been informed before as I suspect the numbers using those two stacks and syncing the addons folder via OneDrive is minimal.
Update: Another user noticed this this morning and said it’s a simple fix, so he kindly did it. It would be wrong of me to share it as its Wills stack, but hopefully if others have the same problem Will might be able to update the original stack. For what it’s worth, from the time of sending him the zipped stack to getting it back was 4mins, so I’m assuming it’s a pretty easy fix!
Thanks for everyones input.
PLEASE CAN I KINDLY REQUEST YOU DO NOT MODIFY AND REDISTRIBUTE STACKS AMONG YOURSELVES.
Just because a stack is offered to you free does not grant you the rights to start modifying and sharing it among your mates. That’s a clear breach of the licensing.
With Mac OS so stringent nowadays towards security / sandboxing and particular protocols developers must abide by, creating an underworld of pirated stacks is unknowingly going to create major problems for yourselves. The consequences are easy to overlook but could potentially be very nasty and difficult to recover from.
Plus whatever modifications you make outside of the official ‘branch’ will certainly get undone the next time the stack updates or you need to reinstall it.
Simply email me if there is something you want me to look at or update. It’s not rocket science!
I have the expertise to fix practically anything I can replicate. I know what is safe to change and what to apply extra testing on before issuing updates. There is a strict 8-point procedure I follow before signing-off any update I release to this community.
Please, let’s do things properly and not start cutting corners or making ugly compromises.
Fair enough. Just trying to help and save hassling you, but sorry to cause offence.
I don’t really see that it’s necessary to email this “issue”, given you’ve now read this. So should an update come out that that fixes it I’ll update and remove the modified version. Should you prefer me not to continue to use the modified version let me know and I’ll remove it.
By the way, you didn’t comment about me opening up the stack and removing the offending file, so “modifying” the stack further up there a bit, you ven quoted me mentioning it, so figured you were OK in this instance.
But my bad.
And I suggest to donate to Will once an update for this free stack is available?
Yes, please stop using it ASAP. And tell me who else was involved in sending or receiving these modified stacks so I can reach out to them too.
Deleting files, adding things or changing code - it all constitutes as modifying a stack.
I’ve got no complaint if you want to modify stacks for your own use, on your own computer. If something goes wrong, then the problem is easily contained and the liability is shifted to you.
The difficulty comes if you start secretly dishing-out modified stacks to others behind my back and something were to go wrong. Who would be responsible for fixing it? My name would still be all over the stack, but I could not be expected to fix a problem I didn’t introduce or could not have foreseen. It’s my time and reputation on the line.
Please understand that dependencies like Sparkle can be very finicky. One of the comparisons Sparkle uses when checking for updates is file size. If the files don’t match what Sparkle was expecting, this could break update checking. Any developer will tell you that Sparkle is a PITA at the best of times! So let’s not do anything to complicate matters even further.
It’s up to you, should you want to email me or not. But I will not be providing ETAs or Beta versions or download links on this forum. Basically if it’s not in my inbox, it’s not on my radar (i.e. not a high priority) to review and fix.
Again Spacer is offered as a free stack. If this is some urgent / critical issue that needs immediate attention, a donation would help compensate my time and is always appreciated. Otherwise I’ll only update it when it’s convenient in my spare time.
It might do you good to have a read of this article, specifically the section about where to report problems and the sort of information we need from you:
https://forum.rw4all.com/t/requesting-technical-support-like-a-pro/537
Other customers (and some developers) have said this advice was terrifically helpful to them. It was written over a year ago, but still holds firm.
As of writing this, nobody in the RapidWeaver community has contacted me to tell me of problems syncing addons with OneCloud or other backup services. I don’t use OneCloud, so naturally it is not a service I do any testing with. Call me old fashioned, but I am not a particularly strong advocate of anything Microsoft.
Ultimately if I am going to do the job properly, I am going to have to check ALL stacks for hidden files OneCloud has taken to disliking. There could be more than need updating. This will not be a 4 minute job!
Stack deleted.
Which is exactly what I was doing. So, stack undeleted.
What? I absolutely would never do that. I’ve not insinuated I would do that. I even said there was no way I was going to do that back up there a bit…
I’m aware of Sparkle and how it will fall over on modified stacks. I don’t think it will auto-delete my system though, so I think I’m safe.
Entirely understandable Will, I wouldn’t expect you to.
[quote=“willwood, post:12, topic:2701”]
Again Spacer is offered as a free stack. [/quote]
Yep, again, entirely aware of that.
It’s not, I said it wasn’t up there. And as for donations, you know full well I never shy away from donating to you for the free stacks you make, the last I believe was for the Mast stack, for which I think I donated a tenner. I’ve made numerous other donations to you over the years for either free stacks or support when you’ve gone above and beyond. In short Will, I have always valued your time and work and have never been afraid to put my hand in my pocket.
You might also recall that when I used some of your free stacks on a free project I made for the community I first cleared the use with you and made lots of requests that users donated to you.
Why do I now feel the need to point all this out? Because I feel, rightly or wrongly, that right now I’m being made out to be a freeloader, which I absolutely am not.
It’s OneDrive, and again, I absolutely expected that to the case and did mention it up there. I said I understand this is a corner-case situation and that it’s entire;y understandable if you don’t have the time/inclination to look at it. That is also why when someone else offered to have a poke around I took up the offer.
Again, it’s not hidden files. It’s file names with certain characters, of which a forward slash is one, and two of your stacks contain files with forward slash in the title.
I didn’t say it would be. I said the person who offered to help took four minutes to fix an issue I’d already found.
Over and above all this though Will, this is an absolutely ridiculous situation. I started this thread to see if anyone else had the problem I was having with Spacer and OneDrive. No one was. Eventually I worked out my own dirty-fix and posted here about it, in case anyone searched for this thread and also needed a solution.
Some kind soul then offered a solution and so I posted here about that, as a way to say "Will, I’m sorted now, as no one else has reported this issue to you please don’t put anymore time into this. And then, frankly, it all went stupid.
To recap… The issue is the forward slash in the file name, NOT hidden files. It’s One Drive, not Cloud drive. I will not be sharing the modified stack with anyone, I never said I would (I said the exact opposite). If my system falls over when an update comes out I will not blame you.
Should I ever avail of your free stacks going forward, I will as I almost always have done in the past, make a donation.
I’m happy to leave this one here now and move on.