Using plugins ============= .. Information on how to use plugins in Bazaar. What is a plugin? ----------------- A plugin is an external component for Bazaar that is typically made by third parties. A plugin is capable of augmenting Bazaar by adding new functionality. A plugin can also change current Bazaar behavior by replacing current functionality. Sample applications of plugins are: * overriding commands * adding new commands * providing additional network transports * customizing log output. The sky is the limit for the customization that can be done through plugins. In fact, plugins often work as a way for developers to test new features for Bazaar prior to inclusion in the official codebase. Plugins are helpful at feature retirement time as well, e.g. deprecated file formats may one day be removed from the Bazaar core and be made available as a plugin instead. Plugins are good for users, good for external developers and good for Bazaar itself. Where to find plugins --------------------- We keep our list of plugins on the http://wiki.bazaar.canonical.com/BzrPlugins page. How to install a plugin ----------------------- Installing a plugin is very easy! If not already created, create a ``plugins`` directory under your Bazaar configuration directory, ``~/.bazaar/`` on Unix and ``C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Bazaar\2.0\`` on Windows. Within this directory (referred to as $BZR_HOME below), each plugin is placed in its own subdirectory. Plugins work particularly well with Bazaar branches. For example, to install the bzrtools plugins for your main user account on GNU/Linux, one can perform the following:: bzr branch http://panoramicfeedback.com/opensource/bzr/bzrtools ~/.bazaar/plugins/bzrtools When installing plugins, the directories that you install them in must be valid python identifiers. This means that they can only contain certain characters, notably they cannot contain hyphens (``-``). Rather than installing ``bzr-gtk`` to ``$BZR_HOME/plugins/bzr-gtk``, install it to ``$BZR_HOME/plugins/gtk``. Alternative plugin locations ---------------------------- If you have the necessary permissions, plugins can also be installed on a system-wide basis. One can additionally override the personal plugins location by setting the environment variable ``BZR_PLUGIN_PATH`` (see `User Reference <../user-reference/configuration-help.html#bzr-plugin-path>`_ for a detailed explanation). Listing the installed plugins ----------------------------- To do this, use the plugins command like this:: bzr plugins The name, location and version of each plugin installed will be displayed. New commands added by plugins can be seen by running ``bzr help commands``. The commands provided by a plugin are shown followed by the name of the plugin in brackets. Popular plugins --------------- Here is a sample of some of the more popular plugins. ================ ================= ================================== Category Name Description ================ ================= ================================== GUI QBzr Qt-based GUI tools GUI bzr-gtk GTK-based GUI tools GUI bzr-eclipse Eclipse integration General bzrtools misc. enhancements including shelf General difftools external diff tool helper General extmerge external merge tool helper Integration bzr-svn use Subversion as a repository Migration cvsps migrate CVS patch-sets ================ ================= ================================== If you wish to write your own plugins, it is not difficult to do. See `Writing a plugin `_ in the appendices to get started.