Picard 3 Plugin: Create Local Plugin

MusicBrainz Picard
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With Picard v3 in the beta testing stage, it should be noted that the plugin system has changed completely from v2. Some of the things that new plugin developers seem to be struggling with is that the plugin must contain a MANIFEST file, and must reside in a git repository. The plugin can no longer be distributed as a zip file.

Recognizing this, @Zas has developed a command line system to help generate the basic plugin scaffolding files and initialize the git repository locally. This will be available in the next beta release of Picard.

Based on this command line functionality, I developed a GUI wrapper to help simplify the process, and expand it a bit to include user-selected working code examples based on a test plugin developed by @outsidecontext. This is available now as a Picard v3 plugin called “Create Local Plugin”, and should be available for installation from the plugin manager in the Picard options settings screen. The basic description for the plugin is:

“This plugin assists in the creation of a local plugin by preparing the plugin framework files and git repository. It gathers some information from the user such as author, title, description and license, and then writes the selected framework files to the plugin directory and initializes the git repository.”

The detailed documentation for the plugin is available on ReadTheDocs.

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I’m a hobby coder. Own use code. Never to be distributed. Coding with Notepad++.

One of my problems is not knowing what “git repository” means. It is language I am not used to.

For this simple head, can I confirm that your handy tool here allows me to make a small collection of files that are 100% offline that sit on my PC. And from these files I can then hand them to Picard and it will be happy. Without any need of publishing my little scripts online anywhere.

Thank you for this magic tool. :slight_smile:

Sorry for daft question, but this should help with testing. Small hole in documentation. I have installed the plugin but do not see how to start it. How do I launch the GUI? The documentations starts as “what it does” and missed “how to launch”.

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Yes. But that’s true with or without that plugin.

The plugin offers an option page in the Options dialog, under the Plugins entry.

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This may seem obvious to someone who uses git a lot, but I associated git with online and\or local servers. This is the first time I have understood it is “just a heap of files”. It is the language I was lost on. :grin:

Either I was “pre-coffee”, didn’t have the little arrow clicked next to plugins, or it needed a Picard restart. NOW I see the section.

Thanks. All found now.

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