Redesign the ecosystem package registry as a filterable card grid - #254
Redesign the ecosystem package registry as a filterable card grid#254Zethson wants to merge 7 commits into
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The registry was a two-column table of name and description, which ignored most of what packages.json actually carries. Each package is now a card showing its logo (or a monogram tile), version, license, description, tags, and a link row built from the registry data: repository, docs, tutorials, PyPI/conda/CRAN/Bioconductor and the first publication DOI. Entries in the core-* categories get a badge so they are distinguishable from community submissions. Filtering is search over name, description and tags plus a row of the twelve most common tags. Registry tags are free-form, so variants such as "single-cell", "single cell" and "singlecell" are folded together through an alias map before they are counted. Tags on a card filter by that tag as well, injecting a chip when it is not one of the top twelve. Along the way: - Wrap the remote fetch in `try`, so a registry outage degrades to a link instead of failing the build. - Match the search query as a substring instead of compiling user input into a RegExp, which threw on input such as `(`. - Collapse duplicate outbound links; many entries point documentation_home and tutorials_home at the same URL. - Drop the <p> wrapping markdownify output, which nested paragraphs.
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Deploy previews built with Netlify's default Hugo 0.97.2, from 2022, while production builds with `latest`, currently 0.164.0. Previews therefore did not reflect what gets published, and the `try` guard around the registry fetch failed to parse on the older version. Pin previews to 0.164.0, and drop `try`, which needs Hugo 0.141+, in favour of the plain nil check the template used before. The fallback markup stays, so an unreachable registry still renders a link rather than an empty section.
Now that deploy previews build with the same Hugo as production, the template can use `try` again: an unreachable registry falls back to a link instead of failing the build. Verified by pointing the fetch at a 404 and confirming the page still builds with the fallback markup. Note the resulting minimum Hugo version in the README.
why would we want this? this sounds like intentionally introducing a bug? |
Wrapping the fetch in `try` traded a loud failure for a silent one: a transient outage would have published the page with all 118 packages replaced by a fallback line, on a green build, until whenever the next deploy happened. Failing the build keeps the last good page live, since the deploy step in gh-pages.yml only runs after a successful build, and puts a red X in front of someone who can act on it. Degrading gracefully is worth revisiting on its own, backed by a committed snapshot of packages.json so an outage means stale data rather than an empty section, but it does not belong in a redesign.
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@flying-sheep actually, I think you're right. I wouldn't call it a bug per se but it's probably worse than just failing which gives us more information and something to handle. I'll revert this part. |
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| {{/* Author-provided tags are free-form, so fold the obvious spelling variants together. */}} |
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Maybe someone knows a smarter way to do this. We could also consider catching this at registry creation time with a vocabulary but then users would still need to know it...
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You could have a JSON schema with possible options and validate the free-form entries against it in CI when admitting a new entry. We use this validation technique with BCAI: https://github.com/biocontext-ai/registry/blob/main/mcp_schema.json
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How about we have
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an alias dictionary, folding unambiguously equivalent tags together (like you do here but centralized)
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an automated comment on PRs telling
- people about potential misspellings: “tag ‘floob’ is new, but we have ‘flood’ so if you meant that pls fix”
- us about new tags people are adding / misspellings the clanker doesn’t recognize
(also using the dictionary so people don’t get confusing comments about aliases we already handle)
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With scverse/ecosystem-packages#392 we can enforce topics that we can then reuse here. WDYT?
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All right - I got 2 thumbs up. Thanks! Let's loop in @grst here who's most familiar with the ecosystem registry and might also have opinions.
scverse/ecosystem-packages#392 replaces free-form tags with a controlled vocabulary, a primary category and a language, so the normalisation this template was doing can go: the alias map, the tag counting, the `>= 3` threshold and the top-12 slice are all deleted. The chip row is now the categories actually in use, biggest first, which is stable across registry updates rather than shifting whenever a package is added. Tags filter from the cards, since 45 of them would not fit in a chip row, and non-Python packages get a language badge. Needs scverse/ecosystem-packages#392 merged and redeployed first. Until then the live packages.json has no primary_category, and the chip row renders empty.
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The ecosystem registry on
/packages/#ecosystemwas a two-column table of name and description, which ignored most of what the registry actually carries. This turns it into a searchable card grid.Cards
Logo (or a monogram tile), version, license, description, tags, and a link row built from the registry fields: repository, docs, tutorials, PyPI / conda / CRAN / Bioconductor, and the first publication DOI. Packages in the
core-*categories get aCOREbadge; non-Python packages get a language badge.Filtering
Free-text search over name, description, tags, category and language, plus a chip row of the primary categories in use, biggest first. Tags filter from the cards themselves — there are 45 of them, too many for a chip row. Both vocabularies are controlled by the registry schema, so this template does no normalisation: no alias map, no frequency threshold, no top-N slice.
Depends on scverse/ecosystem-packages#392
That PR adds
primary_category, the controlledtagsenum andlanguage. It needs to merge and redeploy before this one — until then the livepackages.jsonhas noprimary_categoryand the chip row renders empty (the grid and search still work).Closes #106.
Also in here
latest.netlify.tomlpins them to 0.164.0.RegExp, so typing(threw and froze the filter. It now matches substrings against a prebuilt per-card index.documentation_homeandtutorials_homeat the same URL.