Distribution

This page explains how plugins get from main to a server. Plugins use the Aniyomi-style two-branch model:

• main holds the C# plugin source projects.
• repo holds built DLLs and a machine-readable index, all auto-generated.

The build and publish workflow

build_push.yml runs on pushes to main that touch src/Schuly.Plugin.*/** or the workflow itself, and on manual dispatch. A change only in src/Shared/ doesn't trigger it.

It has three jobs:

1. discover finds each src/<folder>/Schuly.Plugin.*.csproj and emits a build matrix. A new plugin folder with a csproj needs no workflow change.
2. build runs dotnet publish -c Release for each plugin, then stages:
   • dll/<AssemblyName>-v<Version>.dll: the plugin assembly.
   • dll/<AssemblyName>-v<Version>-deps.zip: its third-party dependencies, such as Kiota or AngleSharp. The zip leaves out Microsoft.AspNetCore.*, Microsoft.Extensions.*, Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.*, Npgsql.*, Mediator.*, and Schuly.Plugin.Abstractions.dll, which the server provides. A plugin with no dependencies gets a marker-only zip, so the index schema stays uniform.
   • A metadata JSON for the plugin with name, pkg, dll, deps, version, contract, description, and authors. contract is the MAJOR.MINOR of Schuly.Plugin.Abstractions the plugin resolved. name, version, description, and authors come from the csproj through dotnet msbuild -getProperty.
3. publish merges the JSON files into index.json, sorted by name, and a minified index.min.json. It then replaces dll/ and both index files on the repo branch and commits. The branch holds only the builds from the latest run.

AssemblyName, Version, Description, and Authors come from each plugin's csproj, so keep them current.

Install a plugin

Servers download plugins from the repo branch automatically. Operators list the plugins they want in plugins.yml. See Plugin management. index.min.json is the catalog servers read to find plugins and versions.