v3.0 Changes required for third party plugins

[globalkeith]

Can anyone show me what I need to change in my plugin to support the new toolbar?

Also still not getting the demo_pi working in v3.0, should this be working?

thanks
Keith

[JesperWe]

Originally Posted by globalkeith

Can anyone show me what I need to change in my plugin to support the new toolbar?

Let's get this right:

v3.0 does NOT have a new toolbar.

v3.2 (to be released in the fall) will eventually have a new toolbar, which will debut in v3.1Betas. This is under development and the plugin API for styling is not yet decided.

/j

[globalkeith]

Hi Jesper,

I apologise for my faux pas - I didn't mean to stir up trouble - let me rephrase.

I have recently merged my local git repository with upstream master, and now the icon for my plugin fails to show the image, instead showing a crazy pattern:



All I'm asking is what changes do I need to make to my plugin code to work with the new skins - as you can see from the screenshot, what I have right now, which worked prior to updating, doesn't work as expected.

thanks
Keith

[globalkeith]

Hi Jesper,

this is what I'm talking about....

thanks
keith

[cagney]

Keith

The "upstream master" in your case (GitHub) is still alpha code, not any release or beta code, even though it's called "master" and the version has not been changed.
The real 3.0 master is still in git on Sourceforge. This may change later.
You will have to wait a while, until the final "skin" API is decided.

Thomas

[JesperWe]

Just to re-empathize, the Github master branch is our development code sharing repo. OpenCPN is an open project, and you are absolutely free to build from that if you want. But expect all sorts of crazy things to happen, including crashes, your computer freezing and big hairy monsters eating your hard disk. In real life this means: Don't do it, unless you are involved in the current development phase (to which you and everyone else are very welcome, of course, if you can and want to contribute!)

If you want to build stuff that has been somewhat tested and has a higher chance of actually working, build from the release branches/tags. (Right now this means 3.0.0 as no 3.1 beta has yet been tagged)

And BTW, if you want your plugins to work with current master, you can check the code how it is done for dashboard and grib, and change them the same way. But that way will change in the coming few days, and you will have to change again. That's life on the development edge..!

[globalkeith]

Hi Jesper,

Thanks, I was really hoping for a summary of what changes to dashboard/grib were necessary to get it working in the current master. I'll go figure it out myself.

ps - I'm well aware of development process - as an open source project it would help all developers enormously if we all can collaborate.

cheers
Keith

[globalkeith]

Originally Posted by cagney

Keith

The real 3.0 master is still in git on Sourceforge. This may change later.

Thomas

+1 for that!

[JesperWe]

Originally Posted by globalkeith

Thanks, I was really hoping for a summary of what changes to dashboard/grib were necessary to get it working in the current master. I'll go figure it out myself.

Well, as it stands you need to put a tool name in the "label" field of InsertPluginTool(), and then match that name on a <tool> tag in styles.xml, and draw the corresponding icons in the PNG.

This way of doing it is not good, just a stop-gap, and I'm right now gathering feedback from Pavel and J-E as major plugin developers on how to do it right.

The target is to allow the plugin to have it's own icons, but also allow the style to override them if it knows about the plugin.