Publishing an Addin

Name

Display name of the add-in. This property is localizable. For example:

<Addin id="MonoDevelop.SomeAddin>
    <Header>
        <Name>Git support</Name>
        <Name locale="ca-ES">Support per a Git</Name>
        ...
    </Header>
    ...
</Addin>

Description

Long description of the add-in. It can have several lines. The description is localizable (see the example for the Name property).

Author

Name of the author or authors of the add-in. Displayed in the add-in details in the add-in manager.

Copyright

Copyright of the add-in.

Category

Category of the add-in. It should be one of the following:

• Debugging
• Web Development
• Project Import and Export
• Language bindings
• Version Control
• Database
• Testing

Url

Url of a web page with more information about the add-in. When this property is present, a "More Information" button is shown in the add-in details, which opens the web page when clicked.

Icon32

Icon of the add-in. The value of the property must be a file path relative to the location of the add-in file. The file must be an image with a size of 32x32 pixels.

This icon is shown in the add-in manager.

PreviewImage

Preview images of the add-in. It is possible to specify several preview images using the properties PreviewImage, PreviewImage2, PreviewImage3, etc. Each property value must be a file path relative to the location of the add-in file. There are no limitations in the size of the image.

Preview images are shown in the in add-in details view of the add-in manager.

UpdateRank

Determines how this add-in update is notified to the user. It can be one of the following:

• Important: an update notification is shown in a dialog. This is the most intrusive notification.
• Normal: the update is notified with a flashing icon in the status bar.
• Minor: the update is not actively notified to the user, but it will be shown in the add-in manager.

The update rank can be conditioned to the presence of a specific update tag in MonoDevelop. For example:

<Addin id="MonoDevelop.GitAddin">
    <Header>
        <UpdateRank>MySpecialTag:Important Minor</UpdateRank>
        ...
    </Header>
    ...
</Addin>

In this example, the update rank of the add-in will be Important if the tag 'MySpecialTag' is defined, and Minor otherwise.

There are two ways of difining update tags:

• Using the method: MonoDevelop.Ide.Updater.UpdateService.AddUpdateTag(tag)
• Defining an extension of the "/MonoDevelop/Ide/UpdateTags" extension point. Notice that this extension must be defined for an add-in that is already installed. For example:

<Addin>
    ...
    <Extension path="/MonoDevelop/Ide/UpdateTags">
          <Tag id="MySpecialTag" />
    </Extension>
    ...
</Addin>

ReleaseNotes

This property should have the release notes for this release and for all the previous releases that it supersedes. The format is the following.

{{version2,date2}} release note text
{{version1,date1}} release note text ...
...

For example:

{{2.0, 2011-11-22}}
Release notes for 2.0
It can have multiple lines

{{1.2, 2011-09-02}}
Release notes for 1.2

{{1.1, 2011-01-10}}
Release notes for 1.1

Notices that newer releases must come first in the text.

When showing an add-in update, monoDevelop will only show the release notes for the versions higher than the one installed. So in the above example, if 1.1 is already installed, only release notes for 1.2 and 2.0 will be shown.

Currently, the release notes are only shown in the update notification dialog, for add-ins with UpdateRank=Important.

ReleaseNotesFile

Same as the ReleaseNotes property, but the content is provided in a file instead of verbatim in the property. The value of the property must be path to a text file, relative to the location of the add-in file. The format of the content is the same as ReleaseNotes.

Packaging an add-in

To package an add-in, run the following command:

mdtool setup pack someAddin.dll

If the add-in doesn't have an assembly, use the .addin file instead of the assembly file.

This command generates a file with the extension .mpack. This is the file that the users will download and install.

Creating an add-in repository

An add-in repository is a collection of .mpack files together with some index files, which can be generated using a command line tool. To create a repository:

• Copy all .mpack files you want to publish to a directory
• Run the following command for generating the index files (where /the/directory is the directory that contains the add-in packages):

mdtool setup rep-build /the/directory

• Publish all resulting files in an http server
• Ask the users to register the url of the directory in the add-in manager (this can be done in the Gallery section, using the Manage Repositories option in the repositories list).