List of Non-Responsive and/or Outdated Stacks?

Classic Stacks
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I have been using RW since v.3, and although minimally used, I have still invested in many stacks… I just counted and I have 688 Stacks (installers) in my “RW-Everything-Installer-Folder”. This doesn’t include multiple stacks (in a bundle of stacks using only one installer) i.e., JW Foundation add-ons or Archetypon’s multiple stacks for some of their themes. I still have stacks from Mauricio, Phil Warrender and El-Stacko.

One specific example of probable older stacks; Doobox’s website (today) offers an ‘All-Stacks Mega Deal’ including all of their “47” stacks. My folder of Doobox stacks includes 80 of their stack installers, not including any of their new stacks offerings from the past 18 months.

Is there a list currently available to developer’s past customers to inform us which stacks are not responsive and/or no longer supported, or is there an easy way for me to tell which stacks to keep and which to discard, without cross-referencing each stack in my folder with each dev’s website?

If it doesn’t exist, this would be a great resource to be available on this forum, on each developer’s website, as well as the various private RW community sites, such as rapidweavercentral, etc., and have this database of info be kept updated on a somewhat reasonable basis?

If this Stacks ‘responsive’ and ‘version compatibility’ info already exists, please forgive me for this post…. of course after you let me know where I can find/read it.

Lastly - (un-install question deleted by me to keep this about old stacks only)

Thank you.

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Open RapidWeaver, hold down command-option and push 7. This opens the addons folder for RapidWeaver. Then find the stacks folder. Find the stacks you want to delete and delete them. You can also do this:

Screen Shot 2016-12-29 at 12.00.57 PM.png555×933 152 KB

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@zeebe Since I have so many older stacks, I was hoping for a multiple-stack-removal solution, rather than one at a time, though thanks for the help.

More importantly than removal, any ideas how to check for outdated stacks as asked in the main question above?

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Finally someone who ask this question here. I am not the only one who is waiting for such a list.

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I understand that, and I did give you a way to remove multiple stacks, by opening the Addons folder in the finder.

About making a list, that would take a lot of work by all of the developers or a group of users who wanted to start this.

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@zeebe Yes, of course, the Add-Ons folder in the Finder. Sorry, I didn’t think it would clear them out of RW as well.
Thanks for the tip.

Regarding the ‘List of outdated Stacks’, I understand it would be a bit of work for the developers, though having a web page not work due to an outdated stack, is a bit of work as well, so the ‘List’ would be quite helpful for those of us who have extensive (and older) stacks collections.

Any suggestions on how I, or we in the RW community can get this ‘List’ started?

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If you’re referring to your Doobox example, Gary seems to have streamlined a lot of his stacks recently. I’m guessing it might be to make support more manageable (completely a guess, I don’t actually know) but there are a couple that aren’t available anymore but that still work fine for me. It’s also possible tat they’re only temporarily unavailable as they’re getting updated (again, just guessing).

I only mention that to reiterate that creating the list might be tricky.

I suppose you could start a couple of new threads - one for stacks that are not responsive; one for stacks that are not available anymore (and presumably, not being updated). However, there’d be potential for misinformation, however well-intended, that could be damaging to developers.

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Go to the folder @zeebe mentioned and sort the stacks by date.
Close RW
Create a new folder called ‘Unused stacks’ or similar somewhere sensible such as your Documents folder.
Grab all the stacks older than 1year (or whatever you choose).
Move them to the new folder.
Start using RW again … if you find you are missing a specific stack you can move it back into the original folder.

You can do the same with themes.

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@jabostick, great idea for two possible lists, though I’m not sure how easy or difficult it would be to get just one of the lists going with the stacks developers, so we’ll see how the replies to this thread expand.

It’s not necessarily whether a stack isn’t available AND still works, it’s more closely analogized to when Stacks 2 came out, and the built-in stacks from Yourhead were not responsive, and 3rd party developers made responsive stacks available for purchase (a good example of a stack style that’s no longer needed). There are many examples of stacks that either don’t work, or aren’t needed any longer, as the original “included-stacks” example above.

As for the potential for misinformation, it makes sense to have ANY and ALL updated info of stacks versions to be submitted by the developers only, rather than by any end-users. This should prevent any misinformation.
If a developer is no longer making and/or selling stacks, maybe an exception could be made by a combination of other developers. El-Stacko, RWExtras and other stacks companies have been taken over (or sold, managed, etc.) and have been making this news available to us here and in emails by devs that I received.

Not every RW user visits this forum, so a list somewhere… anywhere on each developer’s site (support page, blog page, versions page, etc.) in addition to this forum would be a great help.

@PaulRussam, Thank you for the additional un-install method.
I should probably not have asked about uninstalling at the end of my original post at the top, as that portion seems to get the only replies, and I’m mainly interested in how to tell which stacks are old, not relevant, not supported, and not responsive, etc.

(UPDATE: I just deleted the ‘how-to-uninstall’ part of my original post to keep the topic about old stacks only)

I’m curious if any stack developers have suggestions or ideas.

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Actually kind of surprised I did not think of this, but maybe check out StacksCentral
https://rapidweavercentral.info/stackcentral/
I believe they list a lot of stacks and they say if they are responsive or not there. That might be a good resource to look into.

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Thanks @zeebe. I checked out rapidweavercentral.info again, and although they do have a category to select ‘Responsive’ stacks, there’s no info that addresses where, or how to cross reference which of my stacks, from various developers, are not responsive, no longer sold (and why), are not supported, and are not compatible with Stacks 3 and RW6/7.

I’m hoping to avoid hours, and possibly days of cross referencing each individual stack, with each dev’s website, especially since my list is several hundred stacks long.

This topic is similar to: Mixing and matching Stacks from different developers, which shows the compatibility and usage of many different types of stacks is near the top of most user’s list of important info.

I hope this combination of stacks-usage, non-updated stacks and mix-match compatibility topics gets addressed in the near future, as stacks are so important to us all.

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I’d like to have a list of legacy non more working stacks and themes.
or at least ( @isaiah feature request for stacks) having a function in stacks that writes a list of stacks used in a project and gives the possibility to print it or export it as pdf.

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I don’t think it would be that hard to put together a simple database list of any/all stacks from different developers.

Guess it depends on how much info you want… sort by:
Stack Name
Version no.
Developer
Stacks version no.
Responsive
Last Update

I don’t think it necessarily needs to be made by the developers but obviously needs their input with some of the above info.
Probably better having a user do it anyway as most developers have enough on their plate and probably wouldn’t want to gather info about other devs.

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Does this mean you are volunteering to take on this “not too hard” task?

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Well, Joe kind of already does this and I forgot about it, take a look here

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Haha… well… maybe. If I get a few minutes away from the wife and kids.

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Yes, @zeebe! This is EXACTLY what I was hoping/looking for!

Now, this new info-link brings me to some new questions…

  1. How to get other stack developers to make a similar… or identical info table to JW’s?

  2. How to find it? I’ve been to JW’s site many times and haven’t come across this table (found it after zeebe’s mention, called, ‘Product Table’ on the JW main page), so possibly a better title name, description or an announcement of its existence might be helpful for others seeking this info.

  3. Maybe other developers already have a similar list or table, so how would us end-users find it if I couldn’t find JW’s list?

  4. Could this list(s) become available on a community site such as Realmac’s website, Yourhead’s site, rapidweavercentral’s site and a permanent or ‘sticky’ spot on this forum?

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