Hopefully you caught yesterday’s post on How To Install Gnome Do. If not, head back and check it out. It’s a really sweet app. As promised yesterday I wanted to outline how to install plugins for Gnome-Do, which really add to the functionality.
Installing Plugins for Gnome-Do
Installing plugins for Gnome-Do is really a simple matter of downloading a plugin file and dropping it into a directory. Once you’ve restarted Gnome-Do you’ll have the added functionality that the plugin offers.
Below are a few example plugins (a longer list can be found here). Simply download the .dll file and save it to ~/.local/share/gnome-do/plugins. If the directory doesn’t exist you’ll need to create it. A quick example in the terminal:
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/gnome-do/plugins
cp ~/Desktop/plugin.dll ~/.local/share/gnome-do/plugins/
Here are some of the plugins:
This plugin allows you to launch Gnome-Do and navigate through your music collection stored in Banshee.
Another plugin that I have been using is the Twitter plugin:
This plugin allows you to update your twitter status via Gnome-Do. No, you don’t get updates from your follows, just send outgoing updates. It’s good for a quick update.
Another plugin that I’ve been using is the SSH plugin:
This plugin allows you to quickly connect to any SSH server. It even auto-browses your .ssh/config file for known, defined servers!
There are quite a few more, but the last one I want to mention is the one I hacked together the night I found Gnome-Do (yes, it really is that inspiring!). I call it the APTurl plugin.
My plugin ties into APTurl to allow you to quickly install packages via Gnome-Do. Access the plugin by typing “aptitude” and then tab over and provide a package name. It’ll prompt you to install it if its a valid package.
And there you have it. Again, if you haven’t yet installed Gnome-Do I might have to just write a plugin that Gnome-Do Installs Gnome-Do for you!
Dude, very interesting! I’ve been using Katapult (KDE Quicksilver clone) for a while now, and it just doesn’t jive well with Gnome.
Very much looking forward to hooking myself up with Gnome-Do. And I’ll for sure be adding your APT plugin, too!
Is the source for your APTurl plugin available anywhere?
What is the plugin.dll that is on the Desktop? When I try to do the copy, is says ‘No such file or directory’.
OH, I get it. that is a generic plugin when you download it. It is early today and I have not had my normal amts of caffiene, yet!
I love using Gnome-do but I’m concerned about its method of plugins. Correct me if I’m wrong, but so far most Gnome-do plugins have been developed and released without source, and some of them have had their source published. What stops someone from building a gnome-do virus plugin? I love using gnome-do, I just think it would be better to have a real distribution mechanism rather than random dlls from random websites.
I’ve also posted my question here (https://answers.launchpad.net/do/+question/26519) which is probably the more appropriate place to voice my concerns anyway.
For some reason, the downloads have an .exe extension, instead of .dll, and 0.3.2 only seems to accept .dlls. Renaming the filenames to .dll seems to fix the problem.
argh i like Gnome Do but that exe and dll stuff (mono stuff) are quite embarassing to me
One of the main points of Do is to provide keyboard shortcuts with nice, long, friendly names for things. Your APTUrl plugin should have a name like “Install with APT” rather than “APTUrl – …”, which looks kind of cryptic, and it’s hard for people to guess that they should type that if they want to install something.
@Asa – all plugin source is available in a Launchpad branch:
https://code.launchpad.net/~do-plugins/do/do-plugins
and we’re working on a better way to do plugin installation.
@Antistress, why are you embarrassed?
I can’t get Gnome-do to launch after I copy the plugins unless I run it as root. What the heck?
Also, why is it searching so many different directories for plugins? Seems really disorganized and inefficient.
@Jadd the Wiki page explains that Opera seems to be renaming the files from .dll to .exe. You’re right that changing the extension is all you need to do to fix this.
The problem was the absolutely brutal resource utilization of the Amarok plugin scanning my library. I think by running root it wasn’t loading the Amarok plugin somehow.
This is fantastic. I just wish the Tweet plugin had its own identifier for Twitter, so it didn’t just give “from web” as the source of the update!
@Conor, the Amarok plugin could use a lot of love. Also, looking in multiple system- and user-specific directories for libraries/plugins is standard practice and not inefficient. Also, DON’T RUN AS ROOT.
Wow, fantastic 😉
dave :
sorry for my laconic comment
the fact is that i used to run Windows and i have some difficulties at present with stuff that remind me of it (.exe, .dll)
It looks weird in Linux world
i’ve just read your article ( http://blog.davebsd.com/2007/12/08/early-criticism-of-gnome-do/ ) : very interesting
To sum up things :
– on the one hand you think that Mono is helpful in a developper point of view
– on the other hand, there is that debate concerning Mono & patents (as far as i’m concerned, i would not say that Mono is just like other languages) and a lot of people regret that GNOME Do makes use of Mono whereas they love GNOME Do
Therefore, if you’ve decided anyway to make use of Mono for GNOME Do, i guess the 1st point is worthing it
Nevertheless, GNOME Do is great
(sorry for my english and note that i’m not a developer…)
I just upgraded to gnome-do 0.8 and the twitter plugin did not come with it. I tried using this method but that didn’t work either. I downloaded the tar and then used the terminal commands here but no twitter. HELP.
hi guys. could someone help me. i just can't play any music (.mp3) files in my desktop. it says PLUG-IN needed or something. should i download what? im really pissed off by this OS T_T. huhu. thnx
If you'll install the <a href apt://ubuntu-restricted-extras>ubuntu-restricted-extras package it'll give you every codec you'll ever need. (just click the link and it should prompt you to install.
hello guys! http://do.davebsd.com/wiki/index.php?title=OpenSe… says i can install additional search plugins from http://mycroft.mozdev.org/. but i have no idea how that works. could someone explain how to to get, let's say, dictionary.com search engine, to work in gnome-do (like youtube and wikipedia show up in the third tab in search web command)