cairoshell
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cairoshell
Cairo Extensibility
Does Cairoshell have a module or plugin system? I'd love to develop some "native" apps for it :)
A plugin system for Cairo is on the roadmap but is not yet implemented. Feel free to help out if you'd like!
hmm I'll fork the code and see what I can come up with! At the very least, there needs to be, I think, some type of CairoApp framework. I think that would be awesome!
I know @josuave has thought about ways to implement this in the past so hopefully he has some input. A good starting point would be the ability to host plugins inside the menu bar (a la menu extras on macOS). We would also need a way for the plugin to be able to inherit Cairo themes and common functionality.
I have an idea on how, the issue is modifying the current code to call "plugin xyz" when it needs to, or display different things, etc.
I will see if I can get some code posted in my fork. I was toying with a provider-based plugin system and a WindowsShell-object-model to apply to Cairo. Let me know if you want to discuss further
+1 for this, should be very high priority. I would love to write plugins to display special things in the menu bar for example. I don't enable notification icons so I have a ton of empty space I'd like to make use of.
This is now possible in my fork of cairoshell. I have added a plugin system and a simple object model/extension point for the PlacesMenu
@josuave - With the forked repo, go into "Pull Request" and select "Create" then answer a couple simple questions :)
@josuave Thanks, I've merged the changes. I hope we can use this foundation throughout Cairo to improve extensibility and use the logging system for the entire app. I did run into one issue, for plugins that modify the UI like the Places menu, we need to find a way to dynamically instantiate the UI objects multiple times, since currently this won't work with multiple monitor support enabled.
This would be best achieved by putting focus on a more robust object model, my next goal! The sample I made could be modified to loop over the screens/menubars and create an entry in all of the “Places” instances
I will also build a couple more plugins to demonstrate how plugin dependencies work.
Sounds good! I did just commit a few tweaks to the build configuration and some other minor items.
@josuave is it possible for plugins to be in a subfolder? Would clean things up and prevent needing to handle some exceptions with non-managed DLLs.
I am looking into a simpler plugin mechanism. I have been toying with using MEF for plugins and NuGet for distribution/management. This is a cool idea as it provides a possibility for a Cairo Store in the future
I have stopped the exceptions with unmanaged dlls. I can keep the current plugin implementation and use an assembly naming pattern “CairoDesktop.Plugins.*” or I can replace it using MEF. This should be simpler and should solve a lot of the dependency issues while loading assemblies from alternate locations. Let me know what you think and I will keep investigating
Would be cool to combine MEF with nuget.
You don't need to restrict package names -- instead you can specify a tag like cairo-desktop-plugin in your plugin package.
One tricky thing about the dependencies -- nuget packages are multi-targeting, so you cannot just go grab all the dlls and load them -- you'll end up loading duplicated assemblies for different RID, say linux or osx, or different TFM, say netcoreapp and net47.
Also, the plugins may have conflicting dependencies. Not to mention that some deps probably have custom build actions that doesn't look like anything in the nuget package itself..
I think the best way to solve these problems is to actually put all the plugins into a C# project, nuget restore and build it, then get the artifacts from the bin dir -- if everything goes well you should have all the dependencies properly put together in a shallow directory.
btw this is possible because msbuild is always available where cairoshell runs.
For anyone interested, the relevant context: https://github.com/cairoshell/cairoshell/blob/ec7693eab176d803551d7f92f4ab8538711e7fb3/Cairo%20Desktop/Cairo%20Desktop/Services/PluginService.cs
This is actually something we have discussed internally. ideally cairo would be able to search a repo for available packages. This is a long term goal and not currently on any active to-dos. We are activly undergoing a large refactoring that should make plugin development a bit easier going forward
Cool, thanks for the heads up. When everything stablizes down I'd like to implement a window manager-ish thing.
I have been thinking about long term as well, and was thinking maybe another option would be to deliver it, via a catalogue, manifest, or database. This is linked to a REST API (json response) backend, that will return relevant info, and/or extension plugins.
The backend would enable rating and giving feedback, posting screenshots, providing changelogs for info.
I noticed this issue and some things relating to extensions for the menubar. How exactly does this work? I can't find anything related to actually making an extension for the menubar.
I noticed this issue and some things relating to extensions for the menubar. How exactly does this work? I can't find anything related to actually making an extension for the menubar.
We have an samples repo, here: https://github.com/cairoshell/CairoExtensionSamples
Cairo is in need of many more extension points. Feel free to check everything out, make any suggestions, contributions or ask questions.
I'm currently trying to make a plugin but I can't seem to get it to build.
It just fails with The name 'InitializeComponent' does not exist in the current context whenever I try to build it.
I've attached the contents of the plugin folder as a zip. Could I get some help on what I'm doing wrong?