Admin menu feature: view installed plugins

Feature
1

How about a feature in the admin menu that lists the active plugins and their versions?

I also propose a header for plugins, like Wordpress has, where meta information can be stored.

And since I don’t see a good reason to divert from an already existing de-facto standard, I propose the following lines to be prepended to plugin.rb:

 # Plugin Name: Name Of The Plugin
# Plugin URI: http://URI_Of_Page_Describing_Plugin_and_Updates
# Description: A brief description of the Plugin.
# Version: The Plugin's Version Number, e.g.: 1.0
# Author: Name Of The Plugin Author
# Author URI: http://URI_Of_The_Plugin_Author
# License: A "Slug" license name e.g. GPL2

Alternatively, a file called pluginmeta.yml could be stored next to plugin.rb

Any thoughts?

EDIT: I do see a reason to extend an existing standard. Let’s introduce a Minimum Discourse Version field as well, which indicates the minimum Discourse version the plugin requires.

7 Likes
2

:thumbsup:

I’d love it if SemVer was strongly recommended or even required.

Author URL should be optional.

Recommended additions, both mandatory:

# Compatibility: Last version of Discourse tested against.
# Contact: How can the developer(s) be reached?

I don’t know how exactly WordPress does its compatibility check that prompts the “this plugin has not been tested with your version”-notice when you install/update a plugin from within the admin panel, but I think it’s an incredibly useful heads-up and I figured this would be a decent first take on it.

(I think it’s based on the “Broken/Works” user vote data they gather after the plugin has been submitted. Still don’t know where they get the “Required: some version” and “Compatible up to: some version” though.)

As for contact, it’s just my belief that any self-respecting open source developer ought have an open line of communication of some sort. It wouldn’t have to be an e-mail, but there should be something put there that indicates how the developer would prefer to be contacted.

2 Likes
3

Totally agree about SemVer, I’m hoping that Discourse will be using that as well as soon as 1.0 is reached.

I like your additions as well.

4

https://meta.discourse.org/t/brand-new-plugin-interface/8793

Looks like sam already came up with a format for meta information that he used in this example. Perhaps build on that?

5

That’s basically what I did, just replacing descriptions that were IMO a bit too vague, since it are general properties, such as ‘name’, with ‘plugin name’