I’ve been working on a plugin system for Diodon for quite a while. Now, finally, it is ready for testing in the daily ppa.

Before you go ahead testing the new version please remember that this code is in development state and therefore should not be used on a production system.

This said, let’s talk about what has really changed:
Basically Diodon still works as usual. However, under the hood a lot has changed.
First is to mention the update to gtk3 and dconf/GSettings. This changes bring about two consequences:

• All your customized settings will be lost on a upgrade. So please check the preferences dialog.
• Diodon will only be installable on Oneiric or higher (and of course on any other distribution with gtk3 support but then from source). Older versions of Diodon will still be available for older Ubuntu versions.

Furthermore, a lot of refactoring was needed to have a clean API for the plugin system. A blog post how you can develop your own plugin for Diodon will follow soon.
If you cannot wait 🙂 you might take a look at Libpeas which is the library Diodon uses for its plugin system.

Currently, Diodon has two plugins. One is the application indicator which is installed and activated per default with the diodon package.
Additionally is there a diodon-plugins package which currently only contains the Unity Lens Plugin.
When installed the Unity Lens is not activated per default and needs to be enabled in the Preferences Dialog of Diodon.

I will soon write a few other posts about the new plugin system. However this should do for now ;).

Looking forward to hear what you think about this move.