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nate-parrott / Flashlight

The missing Spotlight plugin system
http://flashlight.nateparrott.com
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Easy way to install custom plugins #178

Closed ricardobeat closed 9 years ago

ricardobeat commented 9 years ago

There should be at least one of the following ways of adding a custom (private or modified) bundle:

  1. "Import plugin" from the File menu
  2. Drag & Drop a .bundle into the app
  3. switch from .bundle to a custom extension that auto-installs when opened
xremix commented 9 years ago

:+1: Also here the question, how get Plugins updated and what happens if I install a local plugin, with the same information like one that exists online (for developing, for example).

This would help using custom plugins and speed the development.

nate-parrott commented 9 years ago

Right now, there's (embarrassingly) no process for updating plugins besides re-installing them. If you've got a local copy, the only way it'll be overwritten is if you toggle it on/off. Auto-updating of plugins would definitely be a useful feature, but it'd require a lot of new infrastructure.

ricardobeat commented 9 years ago

Hi @nate-parrott! Looks like you replied to (and closed) the wrong issue? The reason I opened this is I want to distribute plugins that integrate with internal tools, which can't be published on github. It doesn't have anything to do with auto-update.

nate-parrott commented 9 years ago

Sorry, didn't see this until now!

You can currently add your own plugins by dropping them in ~/Library/FlashlightPlugins. It would make sense to create a new extension for Flashlight plugins, rather than .bundle — then, you could automatically install plugins by double-clickign them.

Alternatively — this is something I've thought about for a long time — would it be useful to be able to ship Flashlight plugins inside other apps? Like, inside the resources folder of your app, include a Flashlight plugin, and have Flashlight automatically pick it up?

Let me know what you think.

On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 3:54 PM, Ricardo Tomasi notifications@github.com wrote:

Hello?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/nate-parrott/Flashlight/issues/178#issuecomment-69397398 .

ricardobeat commented 9 years ago

An extension would work nicely. What do you think about drag & drop also? It would make the process friendly for non-tech-savvy users, and is probably easier to implement.

Regarding apps, I don't have that need atm so don't really have an opinion, but it does sound like a nice feature. Install app, get spotlight extras automatically.