Browsing and installing packages

dalea.market, branded Dalea Community in the app, is the community catalogue of templates, blocks, data models, addons and bundles. This page covers how to find a useful package and import it into your workspace.

What's on the catalogue

The browse page filters packages into five types:

• Templates: IACUC submissions, GxP SOP forms, IND procedures shared by universities, research institutes, and CROs.
• Data models (environments): pre-configured schemas for ELISA, qPCR, flow, cell-line registries, antibody libraries.
• Blocks: complex 96-well plate layouts, specific chart configurations, calculator widgets.
• Addons: small React apps that run inside the workspace. See Publishing & installing addons.
• Bundles: data model plus template combinations for whole workflows.

Packages are scoped (@scope/name) and versioned (semver). Both scientists and bioinformaticians publish; institutional scopes (@your-university) are common.

Browsing

There is one catalogue, and it lives on the dalea.market website. Search free-text, narrow by type and by tag, and sort by Trending, Most imported, Top rated or Newest.

A package page shows the README, what the package contains (a schema diagram for a data model, the member list for a bundle), the stats sidebar, reviews and discussions. Per-version changelogs live on the package's All versions page.

In the app, Sidebar → Community is the other half: it lists what this workspace has already imported and what it has published, and it can import a .daleapkg file straight from disk. The /marketplace route in the app simply redirects to dalea.market.

What to look at on a package page

Before installing, skim:

Description and tags

Tells you what it's for at a glance.

Author or org

A trusted institution's scope is a strong signal. Click through to their other packages.

Stars

Social proof. Not the whole story but a quick filter.

Reviews

Read at least the most-recent ones. "Saved me 2 hours" is good. "Schema doesn't match the new reagent" is a warning.

Discussions

Open issues, feature requests, edge-case reports. Health of the community around the package.

Versions

A package with regular minor-version bumps is being maintained. One that hasn't moved in 18 months may not be.

License

Shown in the stats sidebar. Publishers do not pick it in the publish flow, so it reads MIT unless it was set through the registry API.

Latest version

The newest published version, next to the import and rating counts.

Installing

1. Click Import to Dalea on the package page

   It hands you to Dalea's install page. The Install box beside it is not a button; it just shows the @scope/name@version coordinate.

2. Review what's included

   The page lists every member the package will create, with a preview for each item and a Map view of how they connect. Installing creates all of them and rewires the references between them.

3. Pick a version

   Latest is the default and keeps tracking new releases. Pick a specific version instead to pin to it and update by hand later.

4. Confirm, then review the decisions

   The install goes into the workspace you are currently in. The page shows the destination but does not let you change it, so switch workspaces first if you want it elsewhere. Dalea fetches the package from the Community itself — you never download or upload a file — and then shows you what it carries and any decisions it needs before anything is written.

5. Watch it apply

   Applying runs as a job: Sidebar → Operations → Jobs shows its progress stage by stage, what it created, and anything it could not install. Every kind of package installs this way, whether it carries templates, a data environment, rows, files, inventory or add-ons.

Installed items carry an @scope/name vX.Y.Z badge on their card, so you can always see where one came from.

Updates

When the maintainer publishes a new version, Sidebar → Community → Installed marks that row update available: vX.Y.Z and shows the new changelog. Update shows you what changed between the two versions, then installs the new one.

Updating is the same operation as installing: each item the package created is matched and updated in place rather than duplicated. Two things are deliberately left alone, and the job says so when it happens:

• Documents you already have from an earlier install. They are your working copy, so a new version never overwrites them.
• Add-ons stay on the code you enabled. Swapping executable code under permissions you granted is not something an update does quietly — remove the add-on first if you want the new version.

An installed template's own card also carries Update from Community, which runs the same install whenever you want it.

Whether an install tracks the latest version or is pinned is decided once, at install time, and shown read-only on the row afterwards. There is no per-update skip and no "major versions only" setting.

Forking an imported template

An imported template is read-only. Sometimes a package is 90% what you want, so its card carries Fork (make editable): that copies it into the workspace as a new workspace-visible template named <name> (fork), cut loose from the source. Your edits never touch the original, and the fork stops receiving its updates.

If the fork is worth sharing, publish it like any other template, under your own scope. Credit the original by linking to it in your description.

Stars, reviews, discussions

These are the levers users have to give back to authors:

• Star the packages you use regularly. Stars feed the Trending ordering on the browse page and signal to other consumers that the package is valuable.
• Review when you've used a package for a while. Be specific — "lock config too restrictive for our institution" is more useful than "didn't work for us".
• Discuss when you have a question, find a bug, or want a feature. Most authors respond.

In aggregate this is what makes dalea.market a marketplace and not a dump of files. Skipping the social loop is fine, but participating is how the catalogue improves over time.

Tips

What's next