Clarion Addin Finder

A dockable addin manager for the Clarion IDE — discover, install, update, and remove community addins without leaving the IDE.

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Features

• 📦 Browse & install addins from the community registry with one click
• 🔄 Update installed addins — staged automatically so Clarion never crashes
• 🗑️ Uninstall addins — also staged when the DLL is in use
• 🔔 Self-updates — checks for a new version of Addin Finder itself on every refresh
• ℹ️ Detail panel — description, author, version, homepage and changelog links
• ✅ Restart reminder — tells you which addins need a Clarion restart, with a "don't show again" option

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Installation

Addin Finder is bootstrapped manually the first time; after that it updates itself.

1. Download AddinFinder-v0.5.14.zip from the latest release.
2. Extract the zip into your Clarion addins folder, e.g.:

   C:\Clarion\Clarion11.1\accessory\addins\AddinFinder\
   

3. Restart Clarion — the Addin Finder pad will appear under View → Pads.

The zip contains AddinFinder.dll and AddinFinder.addin. Both files must be in the same folder.

⚠️ "Could not be loaded" error?
Windows marks files downloaded from the internet as untrusted. If Clarion shows a FileLoadException / NotSupportedException on startup, right-click AddinFinder.dll → Properties → tick Unblock → OK, then restart Clarion.
Alternatively, run this in PowerShell from the addin folder:

Unblock-File .\AddinFinder.dll

This only affects the initial manual install — subsequent self-updates are handled automatically.

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Publishing an Addin

Addins are listed in the community registry at:

msarson/clarion-addin-registry

To add your addin:

1. Fork clarion-addin-registry and edit registry.json.
2. Add an entry following the schema documented in that repo's README.
3. Open a Pull Request — once merged your addin will appear in Addin Finder on the next refresh.

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How It Works

• Registry — a JSON manifest hosted on GitHub. Addin Finder fetches it fresh on every refresh.
• Install / Update — DLL (and optional .addin file or zip) is downloaded to a staging folder in %APPDATA%\ClarionAddinFinder\pending\ and copied into the Clarion addins directory. If the target file is locked (Clarion has it loaded), the operation is staged and applied on the next Clarion restart.
• Self-update — Addin Finder reads version.json from this repo's main branch. If a newer version is available, an amber banner appears with an Update Now button. The update is always staged (since the running DLL is always locked).

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Development

dotnet build -c Release

Requires .NET SDK 6+ to build (targets net48).

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License

MIT — © msarson