Plugin Extensions
When a script contains the _plugin attribute at the top level, it is treated as a plugin that can enable or disable its extensions as a whole, usually in response to inspecting the current project to determine whether the extensions are suitable for the project. Scripts that act as plugins in this way should not be confused with IDE Plugins that extend specific sub-systems of functionality in the IDE in a more structured way.
When _plugin is present, it contains (name, activator_cb) where name is the display name of the plugin and activator_cb is a function minimally defined as follows for a plugin that is always enabled:
import wingapi
def _activator_cb(plugin_id):
return True
_plugin = ('myplugin', _activator_cb)
EnablePlugin may also be called from any other script code, including signal handlers. For example, a script might watch the current project using the project-open signal on CAPIApplication and enable or disable the plugin based on which project is open:
import wingapi
# Activator is needed to store the uniquified plugin_id; start out disabled
_plugin_id = [None]
def _activator_cb(plugin_id):
_plugin_id[0] = plugin_id
return False
_plugin = ('myplugin', _activator_cb)
# Watch project and activate plugin based on project name
def _proj_open(filename):
wingapi.gApplication.EnablePlugin(_plugin_id[0], 'ide' not in filename)
wingapi.gApplication.Connect('project-open', _proj_open)
When a plugin is inactive, its commands are undefined and any menus or menu items it added to the GUI are removed. Plugins may denote particular commands as always available even when the plugin is inactive by setting the _plugin_override function attribute to True.
If the user disables a plugin in the Edit menu, this completely prevents loading the plugin, which overrides _activator_cb and any _plugin_override attributes for functions that define commands for the plugin.
