Some of you might not be aware but I wrote the plugins.nativescript.rocks. I also helped write the plugins.nativescript.org site (if something doesn't work on plugins.nativescript.org; please blame my cohorts in crime, Nathan Walker and George Edwards. I had NOTHING to do with any bugs! 😛 )
Well, with the new upcoming changes in 3.0 and some data that we have been unable to determine I have decided to request that the plugin authors add a little bit more metadata to the package.json file that comes with the plugin.
So lets look at the existing "nativescript" key.
"nativescript": {
"platforms": {
"android": "2.3.0",
"ios": "2.3.0"
}
},This tells nativescript which version of NativeScript runttimes are supported. This allows the TNS command line to throw and error/warning if you are not using the proper versions. This is useful information as this tells us what platforms are supported. However, this fails when people (like me) write dummy wrappers to support the plugin not crashing on the other platform. On the plugins site it will say this plugin supports both Android and iOS, but in all reality the plugin only really supports iOS, and actually doesn't really do anything on Android. I would like to have the plugins site actually reflect this reality rather than you downloading a plugin you thing works on Android and it turns out it doesn't.
In addition since Angular was introduced to the eco-system, there are a large number of plugins that actually do NOT work with NAN (NativeScript Angular) code. And even some that don't work with PAN (Plain Awesome NativeScript) code. In addition in the future we might get other frameworks supported like VueJS (VAN?), etc.
So I would like to start capturing the data so that we can do these additional cool things. And so I am proposing the following additional OPTIONAL meta data to be added.
"nativescript": {
"platforms": {
"android": "2.3.0",
"ios": "2.3.0"
},
"plugin": {
"nan": "false",
"pan": "true",
"core3": "true",
"wrapper": "ios",
"category": "visual"
}
},
| nan = NativeScript ANgular | will be assumed to be false, unless Angular is detected in the Keywords/name/description. |
| pan = Plain Awesome NativeScript | Will be assumed to be true. |
| core3 = Supports NS Core Modules 3. | Will be assumed FALSE if platforms.ios/.android < 3 Will be assumed TRUE if platforms.ios/andorid >= 3. |
| wrapper = Using a dummy wrapper | Will default to false, use "ios" or "android" to signify platform which is using a wrapper. |
| category | This is the category to put the plugin in. Valid categories currently are: "Interface", "Processing", "Templates", "Developer", "Utilities" |
I am up for other category suggestions. But at this point these are the primary categories that I use on plugins.nativescript.rocks.
Please note each key is optional; however, your plugin will get extra points for having an category key. And you will LOSE points if we detect a plugin is using a wrapper and you haven't tagged it, as this is a issue the plugin users really hate seeing faulty data about the plugins support.
I would recommend plugin authors start adding this to any releases of there plugins so that we can capture the data. This will become critical with the 3.0 release as a large chunk of plugins are not going to be compatible between NS 2 & NS 3.