Backend service for plugin metadata

[bentsherman]

As the plugin ecosystem grows, it might be better to separate the plugins file into separate files for each plugin. This way Nextflow doesn't have to download the entire file just to get the metadata for a few plugins.

The problem is that older versions of Nextflow won't be able to pull plugins, or they will be stuck on the last version of the all-in-one file and won't be able to pull new plugins.

In any case, I don't think it will be an issue unless there are e.g. thousands of plugins.

[pditommaso]

I think we should start planning a backend-like system to manage plugins metadata, keep the plugins.json aligned with the new system for backward compatibility and deprecate it

[bentsherman]

And I bet you want to use surrealdb for it? 😄

[pditommaso]

now you said that, yes!

[drernie]

Is this a hackathon project? I'd be interested in helping, as it may make my merges simpler.

[bentsherman]

We will probably handle this internally since we'll need to host the service anyway.