Plugin repos should be combined into the QS repo and built as part of the QS distribution #3040

pjrobertson · 2025-04-05T06:44:38Z

This would allow for easier maintenance, meaning:

We would not need to keep building separate plugins/managing multiple Xcode projects
Easier to code and manage
We just put out a new release of the app when plugins are updated - easier to manage changelogs.
Build issues (e.g. architecture) would be solved straight off

Note: some plugins still aren't build for ARM, including:

n8henrie · 2025-04-05T17:50:46Z

Thanks for bringing our discussion somewhere a little more durable!

Thinking about this over the last few days, a few things I think worth thinking about / investigating:

I assume QS would be distributed with a built copy of all official plugins? Assuming so...
- How much will this affect download size?
- Will this have security implications? (I'm hoping not, relative to current state, as long as a potentially vulnerable plugin isn't enabled)
- How much will this affect build times?
We should ensure that users can still built their own third-party plugins if they want (even if this isn't being taken advantage of currently)

pjrobertson · 2025-04-07T15:32:33Z

Good questions, here are my initial answers:

Download size: A quick look at the plugins I have installed (47, totalling 15MB) means ~300KB per plugin, so for all ~85 plugins that's 25MB. Or compressed it'll probably be much smaller. I think that's find to have a ~30MB app these days :)
Security: shouldn't be any different. Plugins are currently blindly loaded from the Application Support/Quicksilver/PlugIns folder. If anything, loading then from within the app bundle (where modifying them will break the codesign) is more secure.
Build times - will affect CI the most. For dev builds, I think Xcode should cache things pretty well. Would need to test and see. I just build the clipboard plugin and it built in 2.6 seconds (cold - 1.2s of that was 'create build description' which would only be done once if they're all in the same xcodeproj) and 0.1 seconds (warm). So perhaps 2 minutes max cold to ~10s warm.
Build their own third-party plugins: yes, definitely. I imagine we wouldn't actually change anything in the update system at all. Just we wouldn't upload the 'official' plugins to our plugin system anymore, that'd just be for third party ones.

n8henrie · 2025-05-02T21:21:30Z

Thanks for going through these Qs! Seems like the CI didn't have any trouble with the PR.

pjrobertson linked a pull request Apr 9, 2025 that will close this issue

[WIP] Move plugins into Quicksilver project #3044

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