Creating plugins

A plugin consists of a ZipFile with the extension .hmplugin that has the following folder hierarchy.

\---<plugin_id>
    |
    +---assets
    |       plugin.yaml
    |       README.md
    |
    \---artifacts
            Linux:    lib<plugin_id>.so
            Windows:  <plugin_id>.dll

The HookMan project has some utilities to help with the task to generate plugins for the user.

To generate the initial boilerplate for a plugin, execute:

$ python -m hookman generate-plugin-template <specs-path> <plugin-name> <shared-lib-name> <author-name> <author-email> [dst-path]

The arguments are:

• specs-path:

  Path to the hook_specs.py file of the application

• plugin-name:

  Name of the plugin to be displayed

• shared-lib-name:

  The filename of the compiled plugin

• author-name:

  Name of the plugin author to be displayed

• author-email:

  Email of the plugin author to be displayed

• dst-path:

  A path to where the template generated should be placed, if not given the current directory will be used

The generated template has the following structure:

\---<plugin_id>
    |   compile.py
    |   CMakeLists.txt
    |
    +---assets
    |       plugin.yaml
    |       README.md
    |
    \---src
            CMakeLists.txt
            hook_specs.h
            plugin.c

Where:

• plugin.yaml:

  File with necessary information about the plugin to the application using this plugin

• plugin.c

  The source file of the plugin

• hook_specs.h

  The header file with all the information necessary to create a plugin for the given application

• CMakeLists

  CMake file with the minimum configuration necessary to build a shared library across different platforms

• README

  Readme file with the description of the Plugin, to be used by the application.

• compile.py

  Script file to generate the shared library, this command will create a folder name artifacts.

Distributing

Plugins should be packaged for distribution and installation in the target software. HookMan plugins are deployed with the .hmplugin extension, which is a zip file with the binaries and assets necessary for execution.

To create a .hmplugin extension, use this command:

$ python -m hookman package-plugin <specs-path> <package-name> <plugin-dir> [dst-path]

Where:

• specs-path:

  Path to the hook_specs.py file of the application

• package-name:

  Output name of the package file, without extension. For example: myplugin-1.0

• plugin-dir:

  Directory where the plugin is located

• plugin-dir:

  Directory where the plugin is located

• dst-path:

  A path to where put the generated package file, if not given the package will be generated in the same directory as plugin-dir.