Distributing my Hello World plugin & updating the existing tutorial

[JustusRijke]

I am trying to create a plugin for UGS.
The current tutorial is outdated, but I got a little Hello World example going by taking these steps:

1. Installed NetBeans 23 (pom.xml suggests this is the version used for development) on an Ubuntu box with OpenJDK 17.
2. First step in the doc is to add a module to UGSPlatform section. Couldn't find a UGSPlatform section, so added a NetBeans Module to ugs-platform-parent.
3. Built the module (otherwise the next step fails on a missing manifest.mf file error).
4. Added a new window; the only position selectable was editor (tutorial mentions more options). Checked Open on Application start, and added a dummy label to the window.
5. Added the new module as a dependency to ugs-platform-app.
6. Rebuilt and ran ugs-platform-app: plugin is loaded and the dummy label is visible. Yay!

Two questions:

• Is this the proper way to add a plugin (please note that I am a NetBeans noob)?
• What are the options with regard to sharing/distributing plugins? The Plugins menu has a tab "Available Plugins," which suggests there is some (public?) repository of plugins. Maybe I can add my Git repo to that repository? Or share a .jar file that the user stores in some UGS subfolder? Or (on the other end of the spectrum) should I fork the UGS repo and build a release that includes the plugin?

Suggestions are very welcome, and I'd be happy to update the existing tutorial with lessons learned here.

[JustusRijke]

Dug a little deeper and discovered plugins can be shared via .nbm files, so that answers question no.2.

[breiler]

The way that you described above is the easiest way to include a new plugin to UGS. There were attempts to add a repository but is no longer active.

The platform edition is starting to reach end of life since some of the libraries are deprecated on some OS:es (for instance OpenGL on MacOSX). I will focus all coming development on the JavaFX variant (ugs-fx) which will hopefully soon replace the classic edition.

Just some comments on the your list above:

1. I personally use IntelliJ for development. I don't think that you are limited to any specific version of NetBeans for developing as long as it will support OpenJDK 17 which is the one that we ship UGS with.
2. This is fine
3. Not sure what you mean by this. What does your manifest.mf look like?

[JustusRijke]

Thanks for the quick reply! Good to know about the ugs-fx version and IntelliJ.
About manifest.mf: it isn't created until a build is triggered. However, it is required when adding a window (NetBeans want to update the file, but it is missing -> error).