Introduction

XMake supports the plugin module and we can develop ourself plugin module conveniently.

We can run command xmake -h to look over some builtin plugins of xmake

Plugins: 
    l, lua                                 Run the lua script.
    m, macro                               Run the given macro.
       doxygen                             Generate the doxygen document.
       hello                               Hello xmake!
       project                             Create the project file.

• lua: Run a given lua script.
• macro: Record and playback some xmake commands repeatably.
• doxygen：Generate doxygen document automatically.
• hello: The demo plugin and only print: 'hello xmake!'
• project：Generate project file for IDE, and now it can generate make, cmake, vs, xcode (need cmake), ninja project file and compile_commands.json and compile_flags.txt

Quick Start

Now we write a simple plugin demo for printing 'hello xmake!'

-- define a plugin task 
task("hello")

    -- set the category for showing it in plugin category menu (optional)
    set_category("plugin")

    -- the main entry of the plugin
    on_run(function ()

        -- print 'hello xmake!'
        print("hello xmake!")
    end)

    -- set the menu options, but we put empty options now.
    set_menu {
                -- usage
                usage = "xmake hello [options]"

                -- description
            ,   description = "Hello xmake!"

                -- options
            ,   options = {}
            }

The file tree of this plugin:

plugins
|-- hello
|  |-- xmake.lua
|...
| notice no xmake.lua in plugins directory

Now one of the most simple plugin finished, how was it to be xmake detected it, there are three ways:

1. Put this plugin directory into xmake/plugins the source codes as the builtin plugin.
2. Put this plugin directory into ~/.xmake/plugins as the global user plugin.
3. Put this plugin directory (hello) to the ./plugins directory of the current project and call add_plugindirs("plugins") in xmake.lua as the local project plugin.

Run Plugin

Next we run this plugin

xmake hello

The results is

hello xmake!

Finally, we can also run this plugin in the custom scripts of xmake.lua

target("demo")
    
    -- run this plugin after building target
    after_build(function (target)
  
        -- import task module
        import("core.project.task")

        -- run the plugin task
        task.run("hello")
    end)