By default Rhino uses the official McNeel package server - https://yak.rhino3d.com. In addition (or instead!), it’s possible to configure Rhino to use your own package repositories.
A custom package repository is simply a folder that contains .yak package files. The folder can be on the local machine or on a shared file server. You can configure Rhino to include packages from this repository in the Package Manager by following the steps below.
- Go to Options > Advanced and look for the
Rhino.Options.PackageManager.Sourcessetting. - Add the full path to your package repository folder, separating it from the default package server with a semi-colon, e.g.
https://yak.rhino3d.com;C:\rhino_packages. - Run the
_PackageManagercommand and search for one of the packages that you added to the new package repository.
for now it just supports whatever Directory.EnumerateFiles() supports, which as far as I can tell is regular paths, mapped drives (Windows), UNC paths (Windows) and mounted shares (macOS)
Tips for shared folders
On Windows use the UNC path, i.e. \\server\share\packages. If the share requires credentials then first navigate to \\server in Explorer, log in and check the “remember my credentials” box.
On macOS the file share needs to be mounted first in Finder via Go > Connect to Server… (⌘ + K). Enter the address (smb://server/share) and provide credentials if required. Now the mounted path can be used as a package source, i.e. /Volumes/share/packages. The mount isn’t persistent, so it’ll need to be remounted in future.
Administrator-Enforced Settings
See Administrator-Enforced Settings for tips on how to deploy and enforce this setting for Windows users in your organisation.
Performance
Rhino 8.15 included some performance improvements for private package repositories.
The yak.exe tool has a new “cache” command that, when run inside the private package folder, will generate an index of the available packages. When the package manager sees this index file, it will use it instead of traversing the directory. This greatly reduces the time it takes for the Package Manager to load when dealing with private repositories with many packages, large packages, or slow network connections.
$ cd X:\private\repo\directory
$ "C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\System\yak.exe" cache
Building cache for local package repository in X:\private\repo\directory
[...]
Make sure to re-build the cache if package files are added or removed from the directory. Remove the .cache* files from the directory to revert to the old behaviour.
