Better plugin installation interface (plugin directory)

[simonw]

I punted on this in #5 - see also this suggestion from @psychemedia in #67 (comment)

• plugins: it would be handy to be able to select a plugin to install from a list. Gephi desktop used to have a two panel view to select plugins: available and uninstalled plugins in the left hand panel, installed plugins in the right. IIRC, each list had a check box by each item: check items in left and click Install to install, check items in right and click Uninstall to uninstall.

• Ability to upgrade plugins #100
• Link to plugin READMEs from directory #103
• Ability to uninstall a plugin #72
• Upgrade and uninstall buttons datasette-app-support#12
• More plugin directory facet values: upgradable, default datasette-app-support#11
• "Clear filters" link in plugin directory to recover from getting stuck datasette-app-support#13

[simonw]

I can hit the API for https://datasette.io/content/plugins ( https://datasette.io/content/plugins.json ) to get the data. Would it be useful to filter that down to just the plugins that are known to work well with Datasette Desktop though?

I'm inclined not to do that. If a plugin doesn't work well with Datasette Desktop that's a bug in the plugin that should be fixed. Even the ones you wouldn't expect to be useful (datasette-publish-fly for example) are still useful if the documentation helps the user figure out how to run ~/.datasette-app/venv/bin/datasette.

[psychemedia]

Could you use something like italics to show extensions that don't work in the app?

[simonw]

New menu item:

+        {
+          label: "Install Plugins…",
+          click() {
+            let newWindow = new BrowserWindow(windowOpts());
+            newWindow.loadFile("plugins.html");
+            configureWindow(newWindow);
+          },
+        },

[simonw]

Here's a fun idea: what if the list of plugins you could install was a very lightly customized Datasette table? Would get search and faceting for free, and help people further understand what the tool can be used for.

Could be pre-populated in the temporary database perhaps?

Or just an in-memory plugins database which is deliberately excluded from the homepage.

[simonw]

Uninstall work will happen in #72.

[simonw]

Each plugin should also show which version you have installed, what the latest version is and provide the option to upgrade.

The install status facet can have an extra value for upgradable.

[simonw]

An "upgrade all" button would be good too.

[simonw]

For the next release I'm going to implement "upgrade" but I won't fix "uninstall" - because uninstall requires a complex additional layer of persistence to avoid re-installing default plugins, see #101.

[simonw]

I'm dropping the "compatible with Datasette Desktop" feature for the moment.

[simonw]

I'm going to ship what I've got as a new datasette-app-support release and close this issue.