Mobile,Desktop: Resolves #10206: Allow marking a plugin as mobile-only or desktop-only

[personalizedrefrigerator]

Summary

This pull request:

1. adds support for marking a plugin as mobile-only or desktop-only, and
2. improves the mobile UI for incompatible plugins in search.

Resolves #10206.

Notes

Compatible platforms can be specified with the "platforms" manifest key. Valid platforms are desktop and mobile. For example, "platforms": ["desktop"] would mean that a plugin only supports desktop and not mobile. To support additional future platform values, Joplin clients ignore other platform types.

Because changing the format of app_min_version would break old versions of Joplin, the platforms key also allows specifying different minimum versions for each platform. For example, "platforms": ["desktop", "mobile>=3.0.5"] would use the existing app_min_version on desktop and 3.0.5 as the minimum version on mobile. Currently, additional versions specified through platforms must be greater than or equal to the existing app_min_version.

If platforms is not given, it is assumed that the plugin supports all platforms.

Screenshots

Incompatible plugins are moved to the end of the search results and are made partially transparent:

Clicking on the "incompatible" badge shows the reason for the incompatibility:

On desktop, incompatible plugins are also sorted to the end. The incompatibility description text has also been changed:

Manual testing

Although this pull request has automated tests, it can be tested manually with the following steps:

1. Apply the following diff to add search results:

diff --git a/packages/lib/services/plugins/RepositoryApi.ts b/packages/lib/services/plugins/RepositoryApi.ts
index d91d4f74f..86477caf9 100644
--- a/packages/lib/services/plugins/RepositoryApi.ts
+++ b/packages/lib/services/plugins/RepositoryApi.ts
@@ -195,9 +195,44 @@ export default class RepositoryApi {
    public async search(query: string): Promise<PluginManifest[]> {
  	  query = query.toLowerCase().trim();
 
-		const manifests = await this.manifests();
+		const manifests = [...await this.manifests()];
  	  const output: PluginManifest[] = [];
 
+		manifests.push({
+			id: 'this.is.a.test.1',
+			name: 'This is a test',
+			app_min_version: '3.0.0',
+			platforms: ['desktop'],
+			manifest_version: 1,
+			version: '0.0.1',
+		}, {
+			id: 'this.is.a.test.2',
+			name: 'This is a test (2)',
+			app_min_version: '3.0.0',
+			platforms: ['mobile'],
+			manifest_version: 1,
+			version: '0.0.1',
+		}, {
+			id: 'this.is.a.test.3',
+			name: 'This is a test (3)',
+			app_min_version: '3.0.0',
+			platforms: ['mobile>=4'],
+			manifest_version: 1,
+			version: '0.0.1',
+		}, {
+			id: 'this.is.a.test.4',
+			name: 'This is a test (4)',
+			app_min_version: '3.0.0',
+			manifest_version: 1,
+			version: '0.0.1',
+		}, {
+			id: 'this.is.a.test.5',
+			name: 'This is a test (5)',
+			app_min_version: '30.0.0',
+			manifest_version: 1,
+			version: '0.0.1',
+		});
+
  	  for (const manifest of manifests) {
  		  if (this.isBlockedByInstallMode(manifest)) {
  			  continue;

2. Search for test
3. Verify that incompatible plugins are sorted to the end of the results
4. (Mobile only) Verify that clicking on the "incompatible" badge displays an explanation.

This has been tested successfully on an Android 12 emulator (mobile) and on Ubuntu 23.10 (desktop).

[personalizedrefrigerator]

I'm not sure I like this change — previously, the error message included more information about the current Joplin version than it does now. This change does keep the logged and UI error messages consistent, though.

[personalizedrefrigerator]

An alternative to including minimum versions directly within the platform string could be to make this a dictionary instead. For example,

Suggested change

	"platforms": ["mobile>=3.0.3", "desktop"],
	"platforms": {"mobile": ">=3.0.3", "desktop": true},

The above may be more difficult to work with, however, particularly if most plugins will specify "platforms": ["desktop"].

How other apps handle this:

• Obsidian lets plugins specify an isDesktopOnly property. Joplin will likely need the ability to specify different minimum versions for different platforms, however (reasoning: 1) different mobile and desktop versions correspond to the same commit and 2) plugin APIs may be added to different platforms at different times).
• Expo uses a list of supported platforms, for example [ "android", "ios" ].

[personalizedrefrigerator]

An alternative could be to add an app_min_version_mobile property.

[DarkFalc0n]

Is there a check in place to not display the 'recommended' chip, in case it is not supported in mobile?

[personalizedrefrigerator]

Is there a check in place to not display the 'recommended' chip, in case it is not supported in mobile?

Not currently — I think this should be added though. (Note to self: Apply related desktop change in different pull request). Edit: Added in dc43da7.