Establish MPFB on the extensions platform

Vidyut commented 4 months ago

Checked out Blender 4.2 alpha - it introduces repositories for plugins so you can download and install plugins from inside blender - like wordpress, etc.

Should probably be simple enough to get MPFB there? (and any other plugins appropriate) It should increase adoption of the plugin considerably as well as make frequent updates from the nightlies easier. I don't know what is involved, but seems like a simple upload situation.

joepal1976 commented 4 months ago

There are a few parts of this:

Making sure everything works with 4.2. I've done some initial tests, and so far I've only seen minor glitches
Converting MPFB from a "legacy" addon module format to the new namespaced module format. This is so far a bit unknown how much work it is. On paper it shouldn't be much, but that's for small one-file addons.
Ensuring MPFB follows the guidelines for the extension platform. This is #86
Updating the build pipelines to allow for automatically updating the addon on the extensions platform

The problem is that you can't combine having a) compatibility with the extensions platform and b) compatibility with blender 4.1 and earlier. So either two parallel builds will have to be maintained or support for blender 4.1 and earlier has to be dropped.

The Blender devs are sure keen on pushing everyone towards the extension platform. This includes calling every single today existing addon "legacy" and hiding the ability to install those addons in obscure corners of the UI...

Vidyut commented 4 months ago

Ah ok. So it won't simply be a matter of setting up builds for two platforms then... I was thinking that the one on the site would be as usual and an additional one would go there. Well, it was a thought. Thanks for accepting all these crazy ideas anyway.

joepal1976 commented 2 months ago

This is blocked by #208, but is now planned for a second beta early fall.

joepal1976 commented 2 months ago

With #208 done, I have now been able to refactor MPFB from legacy addon to extension. This works technically as far as I can see. The extension version is available in the "as_extension" branch: https://github.com/makehumancommunity/mpfb2/tree/as_extension

Blender gets very confused if an addon is suddenly an extension, so before testing this it probably makes sense to completely remove any currently installed legacy addon version of MPFB.

Still need to update build pipelines and figure out which guidelines are relevant before posting on the extensions platform.

makehumancommunity / mpfb2

Establish MPFB on the extensions platform #190