Managing Plugins on a per project basis

General
1

I know that there has been talk about this over the years. For a season of time I found myself in a place where just keeping the same plugins in the Xojo plugin folder was fine, but now things are starting to get more involved. Has anyone figured out a good way of managing / handling this?

Thanks,

Craig Boyd

2

really depends on what your projects use, who they’re for etc

Before working here I often had several clients
Each had a set of plugin they bought, paid for & used
So I got into the habit of having a different plugins folder for each client so as not to intermix them
I only worked on one clients projects at a time
And I had a little apple script app that swapped the plugin sets around & started the IDE (never made it open the client app project as that one client might have several apps we were working on)

3

Thanks Norman. I was hoping for a little more sophisticated approach, but that will do. :slight_smile:

4

there has been talks that at some point in the future (not in 2015) that Xojo might support plugins at a project level vs at the IDE level. talks is the key word. and at some point in the future is the key phrase.

I would not hold my breath on getting this anytime soon. there are bigger fish to fry on their enhancements list.

5

There could be room for a simple Xojo projects manager program that takes care of plugins.

Say I have a myMenu.Xojo_Binary_ project that requires all these plugins (taken from one of my projects)

MBS Xojo GraphicsMagick Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo JPEG Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo MacOSX Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo MacOSXCG Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo MacOSXCF Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo Leopard Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo Picture Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo Cocoa Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo CocoaControls Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo CocoaBase Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo CocoaExtras Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo Main Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo Util Plugin.xojo_plugin MBS Xojo ComputerControl Plugin.xojo_plugin

In that manager, I select myMenu. The app verifies the content of the Xojo plugins. If they are there, then myMenu.Xojo_Binary_ project is open in the appropriate Xojo version provided in the settings of the manager.

If the right plugins are not there, the manager will have Xojo quit, put away the unnecessary plugins for later use, copy the desired plugins in the Xojo plugins folder, and open myMenu.Xojo_Binary_ project

That would save the aggravation of not having the proper plugins loaded with a given project, and prevent the forever loading and compiling time of cramming all plugins and the kitchen sink in the Xojo plugin folder.

Of course, such an approach would mean one project open at a time. Or projects that do not require more plugins.

6

It’s come up a lot, but no, I’ve not found a good way to manage plugins except keeping a copy of the plugins with your project and then moving them to Xojo and restarting Xojo. It’s slow but that’s about the only way to do it reliably. The other advantage of this is that you can version control your plugins so that a year from now you can use the exact same version that you’re using today. No need to do extensive testing on plugins.

7

Thanks guys. I completely agree that this should not be a high priority. There are a great many other things that should get Xojo’s attention ahead of this.
Yeah, keeping the plugins with the project in VC is the best way to handle this.