Plugin dependencies

[Kwpolska]

• [ ] Find a sane way to implement it (a third file does not make much sense)
• [ ] Make it nicely visible in the web app
• [ ] Have the install_plugin option install the plugins
• [ ] Make sure we do not break much by implementing it

[ralsina]

You mean plugins depending on other plugins? I think a metadata field in the .plugin file is enough

[Kwpolska]

How would that work?

We could:

1. Requirements = a,b,c (ignoring spaces)

2. Requirements = a;b;c (ignoring spaces)

3. Requirements = [a,b,c] (ignoring spaces)

4. (wouldn’t configparser shit itself?)

   [Nikola]
   Requirement = a
   Requirement = b
   Requirement = c
   

   [Requirements]
   Requirement = a
   Requirement = b
   Requirement = c
   

   6. (what about more specific ranges? Or should we ignore the value altogether?)

   [Requirements]
   a = 0.1.0
   b = 0.2.0
   c = 0.5.0
   

---

Or maybe, in requirements.txt:

nikola.plugins.a
nikola.plugins.b
nikola.plugins.c

[ralsina]

Assuming the dependency names are just strings, we can always use "['foo','bar']" which can be created using json.dumps but it should not be necessary, I like your version 6

[damianavila]

Yep, I think version 6 is more clean...

[Kwpolska]

So, let’s actually trim out all of that nonsense and leave in two.

1. *.plugin

[Requirements]
a = 0.1.0
b = 0.2.0
c = 0.5.0

• Advantages:
  • separated from python requirements
• Disadvantages:
  • it’s hard to create a format that would encompass all version requirements
  • we (plugins.getnikola.com) provide only one version of a plugin anyways, making versions here a waste of time and space
  • and we do not have anything else to put after the = sign, something we have to do

2. requirements.txt

nikola.plugins.a
nikola.plugins.b

• Advantages:
  • unambiguous
  • plugins are python but are not in the pypi — we can filter the file for installation with pip
  • if we ever implement multiple versions, it can be added in the usual syntax at any given moment
• Disadvantages:
  • mixed with python requirements

[Kwpolska]

any thoughts, ideas, or such?

[ralsina]

I'm ok with both

[damianavila]

Re-thinking, I am more inclined to the second one version...