Define plugin scope

[kalilistic]

We have a few XIV features we want to add.

• Would there be one XIV plugin?
• Would there be a bunch of XIV plugins? (e.g. market, fflogs, lodestone).

[ArcaneDisgea]

I like the idea of being able to pick and choose features but I really prefer one bundle or at least offer an easy way to install the entire bundle because installing a plugin for each tiny xiv feature would get tedious for a self-hoster.

Another thing to consider is if these are all separate plugins how would they look in the dashboard? Would they all show under a xiv parent menu option or each get their own menu option? I think it would be best if all plugins of a type, for example xiv, showed up under a single xiv category even if they are each individual plugins. We could do this similar to Dalamud with tags maybe? If a plugin has the tag XIV put it under the XIV umbrella in the dashboard.

[kalilistic]

I think we can achieve both. As you said, I was imagining some kind of XIV parent/heading that you could select all the XIV plugins at once. But for the power user, they could select one or two and add their own custom replacements for some.

[MKhayle]

Agreeing with @ArcaneDisgea for the XIV bundle idea to make it faster and have an easy-to-setup way for people who don't want to check every single plogon there is. If I remember correctly, it was said somewhere that the dashboard would host individual features/modules instead of categorizing things under plugin labels so we'd at least require to split core & non-core features imho.

The dashboard discussion may need its own, separate issue, tho, in addition to what's being said here so we can gather what's been said about it.

[ArcaneDisgea]

The dashboard discussion may need its own, separate issue, tho, in addition to what's being said here so we can gather what's been said about it.

#89

[avafloww]

I think we can achieve both. As you said, I was imagining some kind of XIV parent/heading that you could select all the XIV plugins at once. But for the power user, they could select one or two and add their own custom replacements for some.

This is how I imagined it working, personally; we would keep the plugins separate for extreme plug-and-play action, but can have a "recommended XIV plugins" group or something in the web dashboard. I think the dashboard will be pivotal to this experience.

[karashiiro]

For deployment, then, we would want something with an empty modules folder, that things could be downloaded into and loaded after initialization, wouldn't we?

[ArcaneDisgea]

I thought the idea was that any plugins for the bot should be npm modules that you'd just add. Maybe I misunderstood this or can npm modules just be installed into an arbitrary directory?

[avafloww]

They are indeed normal modules published on npm currently. I'm not sure if we want to continue with that approach, or find a way to install them in an arbitrary directory.

I think the current approach is tenable for most use cases IMO, but definitely open to feedback on it.

[ArcaneDisgea]

I'm fine either way. My main question only applies if we wanted to have them installed without npm involved at all.

That question would be, how do we handle the installation?

Do we have users access the server and unzip the plugin into a plugins folder or should we provide an interface in the dashboard to upload the file or link to the file from github?

Do we want to compile plugins dalamud style into a mass repo so that users can browse them in the dashboard?

Even if we stick with the npm approach I think a plugin/module browser would be handy for end users but I am not sure how we could best tackle that.