Plugins

A little bit about me:

I always liked extensibility, programs that don't lock their internal machinery and allow external programs to use and build upon the existing systems... That's what makes a program actually alive.

In Slowshell, plugins are what I thought would cover the areas that others want to explore. You could make your own shell past the primitives provided using actual programs- not just configs. That's the whole point.

What do plugins do?

Well, they can introduce new functionality besides expanding on what already exists. For example, imagine a plugin that adds completely new bar machinery, or a plugin that extends the current bars and adds integrations to an existing application you use. Those modules you read about are very extensible, and additive with plugins.

Things plugins can provide:

• Panel Components
• renderable widget
• Desktop Items
• Background services
• Spotlight modes
• IPC Parsers and Commands
• Quick settings
• Configs
• CSS

Hello, plugin

Here's what a simple plugin could look like:

// You can get this crate from 
// the git:
// slowshell-plugin-abi = { git = "https://tangled.org/bushyice.com/slowshell" }
use slowshell_plugin_abi::prelude::*;

struct Hello;

impl Component for Hello {
  fn new(_ctx: &Context<'_>) -> Self {
    Hello
  }

  fn view(&self, _ctx: &Context<'_>) -> Node {
    Node::text("hello from a plugin")
  }
}

fn register(host: HostRef<'_>) {
  host.component::<Hello>("example/hello");
}

export_plugin!(register);

To actually get this to work, you need to put the plugin where slowshell expects them (you can override this with SLOWSHELL_PLUGIN_PATH):

And to check your new component, you should add it to a panel:

panels {
  panel "Main" {
    components {
      right { component "example/hello" }
    }
  }
}

Where to next

• Writing a Plugin
• Host and Context
• Surfaces
• Styling
• API Reference