Migrate from v5 to v6

Inkdrop v6 rebuilds the editor and the theming system, and drops a number of APIs along the way.

If you never customized the app, there's nothing to do—just upgrade. If you did, some of your customizations may no longer work. Inkdrop disables the incompatible ones on first launch rather than letting them break the app, and flags them in the preferences so you can migrate them at your own pace.

Everything described here lives in your user data directory.

Custom init.js

On launch, Inkdrop scans your init.js for APIs that were removed in v6:

• @electron/remote
• CodeMirror 5 imports (codemirror/mode, codemirror/addon, codemirror/keymap, codemirror/lib)
• The CodeMirror 5 mode API (defineMode, defineSimpleMode)
• Electron's clipboard module

If any of them turn up, the file is renamed to init.js.bak and never loaded, and Inkdrop starts you off with a fresh, empty init.js. Your original code is left intact in the backup—nothing is deleted. If a backup already exists from an earlier launch, the new one is numbered (init.js.2.bak, init.js.3.bak, and so on).

While a backup is present, Preferences > General > Hacking shows a warning.

To bring your customizations back, open the .bak file, rewrite the affected parts against the v6 APIs (see the migration guide for the replacements), and paste the result into the new init.js.

Custom styles

v6 no longer supports LESS, so styles.less is never loaded. Only styles.css is. The file itself is left untouched on disk, and Preferences > Themes > Custom Styles shows a warning while it's there.

To migrate, copy your styles into styles.css—select Open user stylesheet in the same preferences pane—and replace LESS variables with CSS custom properties. Nesting needs no changes; CSS supports it natively now.

Before:

@primary-color: #ff0000;
.my-plugin {
  .component {
    color: @primary-color;
  }
}

After:

:root {
  --primary-color: #ff0000;
}
.my-plugin {
  .component {
    color: var(--primary-color);
  }
}

Plugins

A plugin has to declare support for v6 in its engines field to load. Ones that don't are skipped silently, and a few that claim support but still rely on removed APIs are blocked with a warning notification—update or uninstall those.

Check Preferences > Plugins for updated versions of the plugins you rely on. If one hasn't been updated yet, it's worth letting its author know that the migration guide exists.

Themes

In v5 a theme was up to three separate packages—a UI theme, a syntax theme, and a preview theme—each picked from its own drop-down. v6 merges them into a single theme package, and Preferences > Themes now shows one Theme drop-down instead of three.

Themes built for v5 aren't loaded, so you'll need a version updated for v6.

For plugin authors

If you maintain a plugin or a theme, the full list of breaking changes—with before/after examples for each one—is in the Plugin Migration Guide from v5 to v6.