Third Flow

developing git'ed TiddlyWiki 5 customizations

  new plugin

Third Flow

17th February 2018 at 2:54pm
The Third Flow plugin brings to you another way to develop customizations for TiddlyWiki 5. It is not enforcing a specific development flow, it simply tries to help you. Otherwise, it tries to stay out of your way.

This is the Third Flow plugin version "1.2.11" (release wiki).

So how does working with the Third Flow look like?

While developing and maintaining your customization plugin you normally directly work inside your browser on a development TiddlyWiki. The focus of the Third Flow is to avoid having to use external editors but instead to rely mostly on TiddlyWiki's built-in capabilitites and its instaneous reaction to changes. WYSIWJC: what you see is what just crashed...

In the background, your development TiddlyWiki running in your browser also automatically gets synced with your structured source code tree residing on your local disk. The Third Flow plugin helps here by storing your tiddlers not simply flat in a single folder, but instead automatically uses a hierarchical folder structure based on titles. You can also develop offline first and only later import your changes back into a synced TiddlyWiki instance. You decide on your process.

Please note that this TiddlyWiki is an example of this process: it is used both for development and maintenance of the Third Flow plugin as well as its own documentation, illustration and release.

Source code management is done as usual using your favorite source code management tool, such as git and others. As the Third Flow plugin structures your tiddler source files you get a well-organized repository structure at no price.

For packaging your plugin you finally simply run a shell script which packs the plugin tiddler and saves it to disk. Additionally, a demonstration TiddlyWiki is also created that guides your future plugin users through the process of deploying your new plugin.

Please note that this TiddlyWiki is an actual example of this process.

Of course, this plugin has been developed using its own development flow. Eat your own dogfood. This one tastes delicious... However, one size never fits all, so the Third Flow won't suit many plugin development projects. But for customization plugins it should be quite useful.

And now for something completely different: no, it's not pronounced "Third Flaw". It may be rather along the lines of Fyrd Flow though...