<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/" type="guide" id="pluginmanager2">
<info>
<link type="guide" xref="index#extra"/>
<link type="topic" xref="configuration#plugins"/>
<desc>User plugin installation</desc>
</info>
<title>Plugin Manager 2 - <key>📦 Add</key> </title>
<p>For updating or installing new plugins (extra channels or
features), there's a user plugin manager. It's available as
feature extension itself.</p>
<steps>
<item><p>See the <key>F12</key> config dialog <key>🔌 Feature</key> section.</p></item>
<item><p>Enable the <key>⨯</key> Plugin Manager (listed near the end).</p></item>
<item><p>Restart streamtuner2 one last time for this change to take effect.</p></item>
</steps>
<p>Once activated it brings up a new <key>📦 Add</key> tab
in the configuration window.</p>
<p><media type="image" src="img/pluginmanager2.png"
mime="image/png">Install dialog for user plugins</media></p>
<p>You can scan for available/new plugins there. And have them
downloaded right away. New plugins are just downloaded, not
implictly enabled. Reopen the config dialog to see them in the
regular <key>📻 Channels</key> or <key>🔌 Feature</key> tabs, and
then enable them.</p>
<note><p>Updated plugin versions won't be instantiated right away
if they've been active already. That requires either a restart.
Or disabling + saving once, then reenabling them.</p></note>
<section id="configuration">
<title>Configuration</title>
<list>
<item><p>Alternative download repositories may be configured. (Little
practical value at the moment.)</p></item>
<item><p>And you can let the plugin manager handle ☑ autoactivation
of changed plugin states.</p>
<list>
<item><p>After reconfiguring existing channel plugins, they get
automatically instantiated or disabled in the user interface.
(Which avoids the usual restart).</p></item>
<item><p>This currently doesn't work with feature/core
plugins. Plugin deactivation is mostly visual, but does not undo
menu extensions or undefine callback hooks.</p></item>
</list>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section id="userplugins">
<title>User plugins</title>
<p>Downloaded plugins are stored in <file>~/.config/streamtuner2/plugins/</file>
(not in <file>~/.cache</file>, because they're sort of configuration
and should be backed up in case of local modifications).
To remove them, delete the individual *.py files there manually. But
keep the <file>__init__.py</file> stub.</p>
<p>On Windows they're stored in <file>%APPDATA%\streamtuner2\plugins\</file>.</p>
<note style="bug"><p>Core plugins (those which are installed
system-wide) can often also be updated. The user-saved plugin will
take precedence after a restart. However the version number in
PluginManager2 still shows the system-installed/older version
regardless.</p>
<p>So you'll have to take care to eventually refresh/delete outdated user plugins,
whenever you install a newer Streamtuner2 version.</p></note>
</section>
<section id="disable">
<subtitle>Disable user plugin loading</subtitle>
<p>Since this is still rather experimental, you may disable all
associated features by starting ST2 via:</p>
<screen>streamtuner2 -d <input>pluginmanager2</input></screen>
<p>Which inhibits loading this whole extension. (The <code>-d</code>
flag also works for any other plugin name.)</p>
</section>
</page>