Plugin Manifest

Pano plugins rely on a manifest to define their identity, dependencies, and entry points. Pano uses PF4J for plugin loading, which requires specific metadata in the JAR's MANIFEST.MF file.

To simplify development, you do not need to edit the MANIFEST.MF directly. Instead, you manage these properties easily within the gradle.properties file.

Configuring gradle.properties

During the build process, Gradle automatically reads these values and injects them into the final JAR manifest.

Key Properties

• pluginId: (Required) Unique identifier for your plugin. Use a consistent ID (e.g., pano-plugin-announcement).
• pluginName: (Required) Human-readable name of the plugin (e.g., Announcements).
• pluginDescription: (Optional) A brief description of what your plugin does.
• pluginPanoVersion: (Required) The version of Pano this plugin is built for (e.g., local-build or 1.0.0).
• pluginClass: (Required) The fully qualified name of your main class extending PanoPlugin.
• pluginDeveloper: (Required) The author or organization developing the plugin.
• pluginLicense: (Required) License of the plugin (e.g., MIT, Apache-2.0).
• pluginSourceUrl: (Optional) URL to the plugin's source code.
• pluginDependencies: (Optional) List of other plugins your plugin depends on.

Example

pluginId=pano-plugin-announcement
pluginName=Announcements
pluginDescription=Create, edit and manage your Minecraft server announcements!
pluginPanoVersion=local-build
pluginClass=com.panomc.plugins.announcement.AnnouncementPlugin
pluginDeveloper=Pano
pluginLicense=MIT
pluginSourceUrl=https://github.com/panomc/pano-plugin-announcement
pluginDependencies=

Dependencies

Pano (via PF4J) supports advanced dependency management directly through the manifest.

Plugin Dependencies (pluginDependencies)

You can define which other plugins your addon needs to function.

• Syntax: pluginId or pluginId@version
• Optional Dependency: Append ? to the plugin ID.

Examples:

• pluginDependencies=other-plugin: Requires any version of other-plugin.
• [email protected]: Requires exactly version 1.2.0.
• pluginDependencies=other-plugin@>=1.2.0: Requires version 1.2.0 or higher.
• pluginDependencies=other-plugin?: Optional dependency. If present, it will be loaded before your plugin.

PF4J

Pano utilizes PF4J in the background to handle plugin loading and management. While you don't need to interact with it directly for standard development, you can consult the PF4J documentation if you need deeper technical insights into the underlying architecture.

Advanced: Manual Configuration

The gradle.properties file is a convenience layer. If you prefer to manually configure your manifest or need dynamic values, you can modify the shadowJar task in build.gradle.kts.

Here is how the Pano Boilerplate maps properties to the manifest:

shadowJar {
    val pluginId: String by project
    val pluginName: String by project
    val pluginDescription: String? by project
    val pluginPanoVersion: String by project
    val pluginClass: String by project
    val pluginDeveloper: String by project
    val pluginLicense: String? by project
    val pluginSourceUrl: String? by project
    val pluginDependencies: String? by project

    manifest {
        attributes["id"] = pluginId
        attributes["name"] = pluginName
        pluginDescription?.let { attributes["description"] = it }
        attributes["pano-version"] = pluginPanoVersion
        attributes["main-class"] = pluginClass
        attributes["version"] = version
        attributes["developer"] = pluginDeveloper
        pluginLicense?.let { attributes["license"] = it }
        pluginSourceUrl?.let { attributes["source-url"] = it }
        pluginDependencies?.let { attributes["dependencies"] = it }
    }
}