LoadingPlugins
From Dash
Plugin Search Path
When Dash launches, it looks thru the plugin search path for plugins to load. You can change the plugin search path in the Preferences window, General tab. The plugin search path can contain multiple paths separated by colons. Dash will look in each folder in the list, and attempt to load each cocoa bundle that it finds.
One problem that has come up is the workflow for developers creating new plugins. They have ended up with very long plugin search paths, one folder for the build directory of each plugin under development. It can soon become confusing to know what folders are in the path, and what plugins will be loaded.
My solution to this problem is to add a new build phase for my plugin projects that copies the plugin bundle into my "plugins" folder after the build. Its easy to do, and it makes the install process automatic. I never have to worry about it again. I now only have one folder in my plugin search path. I have been using /Users/Shared/Dash/plugins. If you use that location, multiple accounts on the same computer can share plugins.
I will be doing this for all plugins that I work on, if you develop plugins, I suggest you do the same.
Plugin Dependencies
What if you have one plugin that relies upon another plugin? It might happen that the second plugin is loaded first, and will produce an error because the other plugin hasn't been loaded yet. There is a new feature to solve this. Before a plugin is loaded, Dash will look for a plist file in the plugin bundle resources folder called Dependencies.plist. If the plist exists, it should have a dictionary with key/value pairs that are the names of plugins that should be loaded before this plugin.
