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channel.json ​

Examples ​

The default seed channel.json file lists registered repositories. A crawler compiles this to a channel suitable for consumption by the Package Control client running in Sublime Text. The crawler visits all listed repositories and checks all packages in those repositories for the latest releases and the current metadata.

This results in a compiled channel.json with fully resolved package and library information in the libraries_cache and packages_cache properties. It can be found in the crawler release assets, which is publicly available at https://packages.sublimetext.io/channel.json.

Properties ​

  • $schema
  • schema_version
  • repositories
  • packages_cache
  • libraries_cache

$schema is used by LSP and LSP-json to provide linting and completions.

schema_version denotes the version of the file format. The latest schema version is 4.0.0.

json
{  "$schema": "sublime://packagecontrol.io/schemas/channel",  "schema_version": "4.0.0",  "repositories": [],  "packages_cache": {},  "libraries_cache": {} }

repositories ​

This array lists the repositories to be included in the channel. All entries must point to a remote (https://) or a local (file://) location that can be resolved to a repository.

The following values are supported:

  • a HTTPS URL to a repository.json file
  • a file:/// protocol URL for a local repository.json file
  • a relative path to the current resource
  • a URL to a supported git hosting platform, currently GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket (this is mostly useful for users adding a single package repository in their Sublime installation)
  • a GitHub user or organization (possible, but not recommended)
json
{ "$schema": "sublime://packagecontrol.io/schemas/channel", "schema_version": "4.0.0", "repositories": [ "https://packagecontrol.io/packages.json", "./local/repository.json", "file:///absolute/path/to/repository.json", "https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme", "https://github.com/SublimeText" ], }

packages_cache ​

The packages_cache is technically optional, but allows the channel to cache and deliver package data from multiple repositories in a single HTTP request to significantly improve performance.

The first-level keys are the repository JSON URLs (in this example "https://packagecontrol.io/packages.json").

Each repository JSON has an array of packages with their fully expanded info. This means that any details key must be expanded into the various keys it provides.

json
{ "packages_cache": { "https://packagecontrol.io/packages.json": [ { "name": "Alignment", "description": "Multi-line and multiple selection alignment plugin", "author": "wbond", "homepage": "http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/alignment", "releases": [ { "version": "2.0.0", "date": "2011-09-18 20:12:41", "url": "https://packagecontrol.io/Alignment.sublime-package", "sublime_text": "*" } ] } ] } }

libraries_cache ​

The libraries_cache is just like packages_cache, but for libraries. Like with packages, library info must be fully resolved, which for packages means releases must have the following properties (instead of base and tags):

  • url
  • version
  • sublime_text
  • platforms
json
{ "libraries_cache": { "https://packagecontrol.io/packages.json": [ { "name": "bz2", "description": "Python bz2 module", "author": "wbond", "homepage": "https://github.com/wbond/package_control", "issues": "https://github.com/wbond/package_control/issues", "releases": [ { "version": "1.0.0", "date": "2011-09-18 20:12:41", "url": "https://codeload.github.com/codexns/sublime-bz2/zip/1.0.0", "sublime_text": "*", "platforms": ["*"], "python_versions": ["3.3", "3.8"] } ] } ] } }