Plugin Manager x64 available - submit your plugins!

bruderstein

This has been a long time coming, but thanks to @chcg there is now a x64 version of the plugin manager.

Download it the _x64 variant from https://github.com/bruderstein/nppPluginManager/releases and copy the contents of the zip into the Notepad++ folder.

We’ve been holding back as we didn’t have a way to administer the list of plugins for x64 - the current admin system doesn’t deal with it, and we’re working on a new implementation that does. However, this new admin system is taking a while, so we have an intermediate measure.

Don Ho is looking to replace the plugin manager with a built-in system with a list managed in git. So, in order to get the x64 variant of Plugin Manager released quicker, and to validate if plugin developers and the community will maintain the list, we have setup a repository hosting the list of x64 plugins.

What this means for plugin developers?

For x86 (32bit) plugins, keep maintaining your plugin in the normal admin system.

For x64 plugins (and the x64 variants of x86 plugins), add your plugin via PR to the plugin list repo.

How to list a plugin?

Head over to https://github.com/bruderstein/npp-plugins-x64, fork the repo and create a PR with the changes. As soon as the PR is merged, within a few minutes the “development” plugin list is updated (enable using the development plugin list with the option in plugin manager settings). For now, we’ll update the production list from the development list every 24 hours. Caching means it can then take up to a further 4 hours for users to see the new version.

Can I add a plugin I don’t own?

Yes, absolutely. We need all the help we can get to list all the available x64 plugins.

Why isn’t XXX plugin listed?

Each plugin needs to be added separately, we’ve only added the ones that come with Notepad++ to start off with, but we’re hoping that plugin authors and community members will help fill out this list. Please help us by contributing the plugin that is not listed.

Is the admin system going away?

In it’s current form, yes. The new version, probably not. If the community prefers administering the plugin list with git, then we may well consider it. However, work will continue on the new admin system unless we reach a point where it’s not considered useful.

I’m a web developer, I’d like to help with the new admin system

Great! It’s React, Node and Hapi, backed by CouchDB, you’ll love it. Head over to https://github.com/bruderstein/npppm3 and take a look at the issues -they’re labelled up with difficulties and what is necessary for the first version. We’re really excited to see contributions to this project!

chcg

For existing plugins in the x86 list from 2017/4/17 see as starting point https://github.com/bruderstein/npp-plugins-x64/blob/master/plugins/plugins_template.xml, where 1. and 2. from chang list below are basically already done. So the plugin section which should be added could be taken from the template, modified and added to plugins64.xml.

Things to change:

Remove the <unicodeVersion> and <ansiVersion>
Add an <x64Version> tag with the version of your x64 plugin
Change the download URL to your x64 download path if you don't bundle all variants in one zip file
Add the md5sums to plugins/validate.json of each file that you're copying (with a <copy> tag) with validate="true"

Jay Pakulski

Thank you very much!

Guido Thelen

Hi,
in the meantime I tried 5 or 6 times to register for the admin system. It says that it will send a mail to confirm my email address but no email received so far. Could you please guide me how to register?

Regards
Guido

ThiefOfBagEnd

Just want to say thanks for getting 64-bit plugin manager working. Just used it tonight without any problems! Love it! IMO I think it should be packaged it with N++ again. Thanks @bruderstein and @chcg

cpmcgrath

Hi,
Just wanted to add my 2 cents. I LOVE the idea of using pull requests to submit updates to your plugins. It’s clean and gives the change a workflow. I really felt the workflow was missing before - you’d submit, post to the forum, and hope that it got seen. I’m sure that the last few releases I got lazy and didn’t bother posting and just hoped it would eventually get released.

I hope the x86 version moves to this model too.

My only complaint is working with a single giant xml can be tedious and I can see conflicts becoming an issue. I’d love to see a separate xml file per plugin (which contains the details of the x86 and x64 versions) which can then be combined into the single large file at compile time (This would also let you remove excess white space, etc to make the file as small as possible).

chcg

For x86 there is the web interface https://npppm.bruderste.in/plugins/view/code-alignment, which you could also modify yourself, if you have a login. Originally there was the idea to create a new webinterface (https://github.com/bruderstein/npppm3) for x86/x64, but due to the unclear future of the PM (see https://notepad-plus-plus.org/community/topic/14315/notepad-7-5-release/34), this dev was stopped. And the workaround via github maybe is the future for a longer time as there is no timeline for the buildin plugin admin system.

cpmcgrath

Hi, just a quick thought. Could a chocolatey package be created for installing the plugin manager? Could make life much simpler to be able to type
choco install notepadplusplus.pluginmanager -y
to install it.

chcg

Maybe, any experience in creating chocolatey packages? After a further quick “evil” thought, probably all plugins could be hosted as chocolatey packages or maybe even in the windows store.

cpmcgrath

I’ve made a couple, it should be pretty simple (it’s just a powershell script)
The case which complicates things for putting any extension on there (including the plugin manager, but that might have some advantages) is what if when updating, Notepad++ is already open? The files are locked and the update will fail. It needs a way to schedule the update.