Hi Connor,

I currently use Dropbox as a PacletServer and (after switching from Windows to macOS) I have written the following little script for deployment of Paclets (I call it from .zsh where in .zshrc I defined a simple alias so that I can conveniently call it from anywhere by deploypaclet pacletdir.

#!/usr/bin/env wolframscript

(* read raw arguments *)
$numArgs = Length @ $ScriptCommandLine;
$argWorkingDirectory = If[ $numArgs >= 2, $ScriptCommandLine[[2]], Missing[] ];
$argPacletServer = If[$numArgs >2 && DirectoryQ @ $ScriptCommandLine[[3]], $ScriptCommandLine[[3]], Missing[] ];

(* create paclet archive *)
$pacletWorkingDirectory = If[ DirectoryQ @ $argWorkingDirectory, $argWorkingDirectory, Echo["Paclet working directory not found."]; Quit[] ];

$defaultPacletServer = FileNameJoin @ {
    $HomeDirectory,
    "Dropbox",
    "PacletServerDirectory"
}; (* or wherever *)

$pacletSite = FileNameJoin @ { 
    If[ MissingQ @ $argPacletServer, $defaultPacletServer, $argPacletServer ], 
    "Paclets" 
};

If[ CreatePacletArchive[ $pacletWorkingDirectory, $pacletSite ] === $Failed, Echo["Paclet archive could not be created at given site."]; Quit[] ];

(* build paclet site files *)
$pacletServer = ParentDirectory[ $pacletSite ];
PacletManager`BuildPacletSiteFiles @ $pacletServer;
Print["Paclet deployed to ", $pacletServer ]

Another note: I just posted a question regarding the creation of larger Paclets with interdependencies here. It turns out that this works out nicely with Workbench/Eclipse and you can find the implementation for a function from the main package simply by pressing F3.

I would greatly appreciate, if you guys could come back with more advice to people like me, who still prefer an integrated IDE like Eclipse for developing packages. :)

Saving notebooks in Git is not an entirely lost cause. There are a number of options you can disable to remove metadata from notebook files and make them easier to version-control. See, for example, the ResourceFunction SaveReadableNotebook:

https://resources.wolframcloud.com/FunctionRepository/resources/SaveReadableNotebook/

Evaluating the following lines in your notebook also helps a lot:

SetOptions[InputNotebook[], PrivateNotebookOptions -> {"FileOutlineCache" -> False}];
SetOptions[InputNotebook[], "TrackCellChangeTimes" -> False]
SetOptions[InputNotebook[], CellLabelAutoDelete -> True]

You can also remove the existing cell change timestamps in the Cell -> Notebook History... dialog.