As a follow-up, the current state I'm facing is:
- Flexdash needs 3 packages, prob 4:
- node-red-flexdash: core of flexdash, primarily configuration nodes
- node-red-flexdash-plugin: flexdash plugin due to bug described in How do Node-RED plugins work? (can't reliably have a plugin and a node in the same pkg)
- node-red-fd-corewidgets: core set of widget nodes, really separable from the core of flexdash as someone could install a different set of widgets
- node-red-flexdash-sidebar: sidebar for FlexDash, which perhaps should/could be integrated into the node-red-flexdash package, or perhaps not
- While the instructions can tell someone to "npm install node-red-fd-corewidgets" and get everything else pulled in as dependencies, due to the bug described here this is not possible through the palette manager: the dependencies get pulled in at the npm level but not their nodes and thus users end up with missing nodes. Instead users have to select all 3 or 4 packages for install manually in the palette manager.
- In order to allow the manual install of all the dependencies in the palette manager, I have to publish all these packages in the flow library, which due to the fact that it can't be automated is both painful and error prone (see Script to trigger flow library update after npm publish?)
If I'm missing a solution to all this I'd be grateful to hear!
Edit: Ticket about the failure to install nodes in dependencies: When installing packages using palette manager the nodes of dependencies are not discovered · Issue #3529 · node-red/node-red · GitHub
