Scripting Plugins

What is a Lauf Plugin?

So you want to start scripting your own plugins eh? Great! Before you start hacking away though, there’s a few things you should understand. A plugin for Lauf is essentially just a normal shell script. The only difference between a normal shell script and a Lauf plugin is that Lauf passes on information to it’s plugins by using shared functions and variables.

Table 1. The list of functions and variables are the following:

Function / Variable	Name	Usage	Description
Function	yarra	yarra "Variable Name" "String"	Allows you to split a string into multiple variables. Basically a fake array or sorts.
Function	lauf_notify	lauf_notify "Heading" "Body"	Allows a plugin to notify the user information.
Variable	$lauf_exec	$lauf_exec	Holds what ever was typed into Lauf
Variable	$lauf_exec1	$lauf_exec1	Holds the command or plugin name being used
Variable	$lauf_exec2 - $lauf_exec999	everything else	The next unlimited number of variables hold anything else typed into Lauf

Open the [[Example Plugin|http://github.com/joshua-redfield/lauf/blob/testing/dev/example.sh]] and look over these instructions below.

First, let’s go over the heading comments. The first three lines should be filled in accordingly, the name of the plugin, your email or contact info, and dependincies. Please note that the way plugin.sh (the lauf plugin manager) reads plugin data, you must make it all done on one line!

The 4th line is the plugin summary, What the plugin does in other words. When activating a plugin this information will be pulled to notify the user.

The 7th line should explain how to use the plugin, This will also be pulled to notify the user.

The 9th line is the plugin dependencies which will also be pulled to notify the user upon activating the plugin.

Table 2. The following list includes variables that contain useful information for plugins

Variable	Description
$lauf_app_dir	The directory where Lauf currently resides in
$lauf_app_icon	Location of where Lauf’s icon is located
$lauf_version	Version information
$lauf_app_name	Lauf’s application name
$lauf_app_motto	Lauf’s slogan
$lauf_core_dir	Location of core plugins
$lauf_plugin_dir	Location of external plugins
$lauf_app_options	General Lauf options, Allows plugins to grab information from lauf.cfg