[Geany-devel] [RFC] Plugin Template

[Colomban Wendling]

Le 03/05/2011 03:54, Matthew Brush a écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> I was thinking it would be useful to have a template directory with all
> the "boiler-plate" for a Geany plugin under version control to get
> people started quicker writing a new plugin that could become part of
> the Geany Plugins project easier.  I saw something similar[1] in the
> GStreamer project.
> 
> My ideas was to put in the directory the files required for the build
> system(s), a generic README template, a GPL2 COPYING, etc, and a src/
> dir with a basic demo plugin (maybe from the Geany plugins/ dir?).
> 
> What other common files besides these should be in there?
>   AUTHORS
>   COPYING
>   ChangeLog
>   Makefile.am
>   NEWS
>   README
>   THANKS
>   TODO
>   wscript_build
>   wscript_configure (are both these Waf files needed?)
>   ../build/foo.m4 (how to include if it's in .. ?)
>   src/foo.c
>   src/Makefile.am
>   configure.ac? (for building before it's in Geany Plugins proper)
> 
> What do you guys think?
> Is it worthwhile?
> Have I missed any important files?
> 
> I was going to follow this up with a tutorial on the Wiki explaining how
> to check-out the template, describe which files needed to be modified
> and how to do so, etc.  Also it would have some more general notes from
> HACKING, getting commit access, the cppcheck stuff and so on.  This
> would be a good companion to the plugin howto I think.

I don't think the template is really useful, apart maybe for
Makefile.ams and wscript_* (though I don't know exactly what's in the
later), but I think that for the other files a tutorial is just enough
and probably even better:

 * AUTHORS just contains he author's name, nothing predictable
 * COPYING OK, should probably be a GPL, but we already have both v2 and
v3 (maybe we should fix this BTW...)
 * ChangeLog, maybe required for the build system, not sure, but anyway
its content is not predictable either
 * NEWS again, not predictable
 * README same
 * THANKS, again
 * TODO same, and not even needed
 * ../build/foo.m4 though it's quite similar from a plugin to another
should not be put in the real build dir, so where to place it? I think a
tutorial explaining what to put in it is better
 * src/foo.c though a small part of it will be the same for every
plugin, most of it's content will not be the same, and we even already
have a doc/demo for this
 * configure.ac is a bit pointless since we talk about geany-plugins
integration ^^

So I think the tutorial is a great idea, but I'm not sure the demo entry is.

Cheers,
Colomban