Themekit: "theme new" fails: "src is empty"

[jameswood]

What happened

Running theme new --password=[your-password] --store=[your-store.myshopify.com] (with my details) failed:

James$ theme new --password=####### --store=#####.myshopify.com
[#####.myshopify.com] creating new theme "Timber-latest" from https://github.com/Shopify/Timber/archive/v2.2.2.zip
src is empty

What I expected to happen

A new template based on Timber to be created in my store, and downloaded to my local folder.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create private app
2. Use new app password in theme new --password=[your-password] --store=[your-store.myshopify.com]
3. shrug and instead download existing theme and find success

My Environment

OS (including version): macOS 10.13.6 (17G65) (High Sierra)
Themekit version: ThemeKit 0.8.0 darwin/amd64 (installed via Homebrew)
Ignore Files(if any): None that I know of

[tanema]

🤦‍♂️ I was able to reproduce this bug, I will have a fix for you in a moment

[jameswood]

Don't rush on my account... I installed Timber manually onto the site and pulled it down with Theme. Just thought I'd report it! loving local editing. Thank you!

[tanema]

Actually it looks like themekit is sending the right data but it looks like Timber has been archived which might cause this, or this may be a shopify bug! 🤔

Edit: Confirmed that it is not that Timber has been archived, it seems to be a Shopify bug.

[tanema]

Reference for Shopify folk:
Request:

Response:

[tanema]

Holy hell this has been a day. This is actually because Github stopped sending Content-Length headers in the Timber zip file releases

[tanema]

Okay I am working on shipping a fix in shopify to fix this issue.

[jameswood]

Daaaaaaamn... you really had to go down the rabbit hole. Nice work! (so far!)

[beheist]

Hey, thanks for taking care of this. Just wondering: Do you have an ETA for a fix? I'm just getting started using Themekit and am wondering whether to wait for a fix or use something else (like slate) to get started. Or is there a viable workaround?

[jameswood]

My workaround was to manually install the Timber theme onto my site, then use Theme to pull a local copy. You could also pull any other theme from your site, you don't have to start with Timber.

[tanema]

@beheist Sorry about this, the issue is not currently a straightforward fix but I will keep you updated when I have information. If you are just getting started developing themes, I recommend slate though. They have a more opinionated workflow that is a little less daunting to get started.

[halburgiss]

My first time with shopify and am getting same error. I get an empty config.yml file too. I am ok with trying slate, but have no idea what/where yarn is (on Ubuntu).

hal@lancelot:~/Sites/blofish$ yarn create slate-theme my-new-theme
ERROR: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'create'

[justiny]

@halburgiss this worked for me:

npm install -g @shopify/slate

slate theme <my-theme-name>

cd < my-theme-name >

Run theme new --password=<password here> --store=<store name>

[tanema]

You shouldn't have to run theme new after running slate. I believe it would have already created the theme for you.

[justiny]

@tanema right, my bad. you just need to go into config.yml and add details. then run yarn start.

[halburgiss]

Is yarn an npm module? I have a "yarn" but it doesn't sound right:

yarn - scenario testing of Unix command line tools

[tanema]

Okay so github got back to me somewhat unhelpfully

there are no guarantees for whether a retrieved archive will be sent chunked (no content length known ahead of time), or non-chunked-with-length.

This is an issue currently because all of shopify's asset fetching, check content-length before downloading the whole file, and I do not have a way forward currently for changing that, I will have to change how theme new operates for the next version.

[tanema]

Okay I think I will need to create a new solution for this, and may end up creating and uploading a new theme from local files. This will be a big change into the way themekit works so that will have to be for version 1.0.0 so this change will not be in the next release (scheduled for next week)

[LucasKovacs]

Any workaround for this?

[tanema]

You can download an archive of timber (if that is what you want to start with) and create it on the online store with the "Upload theme" button

I know that is annoying and I apologize for that. I hope to have a solution soon.

[tanema]

Okay I am working on new functionality for theme new to just generate the files locally and upload to a blank theme. Did everyone like Timber as a starting point or did you end up deleting a lot of the initial files to get started?

[zzfortezz]

I like your idea because when I start a new project I have to delete almost every initial file like CSS, replace all class in HTML file

[tanema]

The current format of the new command that I am working on puts the simple theme template in the root directory. You can check it out here https://github.com/Shopify/themekit/tree/new_command/theme-template Please give me feedback on it! Also I am hoping that in the future this will make it easier for theme developers to submit PRs on the theme template to a better starting point.

[mattsince87]

@tanema Just ran into this issue myself. I'm developing a new theme for a client and to answer your 'Starting Point' question... i most preferably like to develop from scratch, so just the basic file structure and template files. Generally i like to use assets/scss then use gulp to rename my theme.scss into theme.scss.liquid among other workflow methods. For me at least in an ideal world theme new would just create said directories and the config.yml then i'd be good to go!

[tanema]

I am trying to ride a line as well. I want to provide all the required files for a new theme and make it easy to start from scratch but also put in a few helpful directions for someone newer to theme development. So I left the customer templates blank because I assumed it would be a while for a newer theme developer to get to them, but on the main pages, I put the minimum amount of code in each to display what they should display. I could probably pare down the cart page though.

[mattsince87]

@tanema Sounds good to me, let me know if u need any help/contribution with any of this as i'm a huge advocate of ThemeKit over Slate 😃

[tanema]

Okay everyone I have merged changes to the new command, You can try it out by running theme update --version=v1.0.0-pre

It will:

• create an empty theme on shopify
• generate files locally (It will not overwrite files so if you run theme new in an existing theme, you will be able to easily duplicate a theme.
• upload those files to shopify to make your new theme valid.
• create/update the config

If there are no surprises in how this works, I will close this issue and you can open new issues for bugs, and changes in the command or theme template.

[jeroesguerra]

Hey @tanema thanks for all your hard work.

Unfortunately, it looks like my files were not generated to my root directory.

[tanema]

It adheres to any directory config you have so if you passed a --dir flag or you have a config.yml with a directory config in it, (in the environment you specified) then it will generate the files there. Otherwise it will generate the files in the directory that you run the command in.

[beheist]

Hey @tanema, I can confirm it works after updating to 1.0.0-pre and adding the new --name parameter. Thanks for your work!

[tanema]

Thanks for confirming! It will be another couple of weeks before the next version is released. I have a few more bugs and one last feature before it is fixed.

[tanema]

Version 1 has now been deployed! Thanks for all your help!