Developing a plugin

Naming

By convention, most plugins are named brz-xxx and are installed into a directory called xxx. Note that the directory name must be a legal Python package name, so a plugin called brz-xxx-yyy need to be installed into a directory called xxx_yyy, i.e. ‘-’ in a plugin name should be mapped to an underscore in the directory name.

Licensing

We encourage plugin authors to make their plugins publicly available under the same license as Breezy itself, namely GPL v2 or later. However, there is no requirement to do so. You are free to create Breezy plugins for private or internal use within your company and not distribute them.

By sharing your work, a larger number of people benefit. In our experience, plugin developers also benefit heavily by having more users involved in the design, testing, bug fixing and longer term maintenance. In other words, sharing leads to a better plugin faster.

Testing

To ensure your plugin under development is available to Breezy, set the BRZ_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable to its parent directory. Alternatively, you may wish to develop your plugin within a directory under your personal plugins area (~/.config/breezy/plugins on GNU/Linux) or put a symbolic link in that area pointing to your plugin under test. Finally you can use BRZ_PLUGINS_AT to point to a specific directory for a specific plugin (separated by your platform’s value of os.pathsep), e.g.

You can disable loading plugins with BRZ_DISABLE_PLUGINS.

If you want to stop loading all but installed plugins you can use:

BRZ_PLUGIN_PATH=-site

We also encourage plugin developers to provide tests for their plugin. When you run brz selftest, Breezy will scan all its plugins to see if they contain a function named test_suite(). For each plugin that does, it calls the function and adds any resulting tests to the master test suite. To run just the tests for plugin xxx, the command is:

brz selftest -s bp.xxx

Providing help

Plugins in this guide have their documentation automatically generated from the online help provided for a plugin. Sections are ordered as follows:

  1. High level introduction

  2. Plugin-specific help topics (COMING SOON)

  3. Commands defined or extended by the plugin.

High level help is specified in the docstring for the __init__.py module. You can register plugin-specific help topics in __init__.py like this:

_xxx_tutorial = """XXX Tutorial

Welcome to xxx, your new best friend. ...
"""
topic_registry.register('xxx-tutorial',
    _xxx_tutorial,
    'How to use xxx')

Command level help is specified in the docstring for the relevant cmd_xxx Command class.

Note

The final documentation needs to be in ReST format. Keep in mind though that the documentation should also be readable via brz help xxx so it’s best to keep markup to a reasonable minimum.

Providing custom code via hooks

Hooks let you provide custom code at certain processing points. The available hook point are documented in the User Reference.

Adding a new hook is done with, for example:

import breezy.branch
breezy.branch.Branch.hooks.install_named_hook('post_push', post_push_hook,
                               'My post_push hook')

For more information on how to write hooks, see http://doc.bazaar-vcs.org/development/en/user-guide/hooks.html.

Defining a new command

Breezy commands are defined as subclasses of breezy.commands.Command, the command name is specified by the name of the subclass, and they must be registered into brz with the breezy.commands.register_command function at module import time.

To define the brz foo-bar command:

from breezy.commands import Command, register_command

class cmd_foo_bar(Command):
  # see breezy/builtins.py for information about what to put here
  pass

register_command(cmd_foo_bar)

If the class name starts with cmd_, the prefix will get dropped and _ will be replaced by - characters.

Managing data

Plugin data falls into several categories:

  • Configuration settings.

  • Data the user can see and version control.

  • Data behind the scenes.

Configuration settings are often stored in branch.conf, locations.conf or bazaar.conf.

User-visible data for a plugin called xxx should be stored in .bzrmeta/xxx. If mutiple files are desirable, make .bzrmeta/xxx a directory or give them a common prefix within .bzrmeta, e.g. xxx-foo, xxx-bar.

Data managed behind the scenes should be stored in .bzr. Depending on the nature of the data, it may belong in a subdirectory within there, e.g. checkout, branch or repository. It’s your responsibility to ensure behind-the-scenes data is propagated and merged appropriately via custom code. You may want to use existing hooks for this or ask for new hooks to help.

Useful metadata

It is highly recommended that plugins define a version number. This is displayed by brz plugins and by the qplugins GUI dialog. To do this, define version_info in __init__.py like this:

version_info = (1, 2, 0, 'beta', 1)

Plugins can also declare other useful metadata such as a mimimum breezy version, new transports and storage formats. See Plugin API for details.

Performance tips

When brz starts up, it imports every plugin, so plugins can degrade performance when they’re not being used. However, sub-modules are not loaded, only the main name.

One way you can avoid this slowdown is by putting most of your code in sub-modules, so that the plugin, itself, is small. All you really need in the __init__.py is the plugin’s Command classes, the commands to register them, and the optional test_suite().

Another way to reduce your plugin’s overhead is to use the breezy lazy_import functionality. That looks something like this:

from breezy.lazy_import import lazy_import
lazy_import(globals(), """
from breezy import (
    branch as _mod_branch,
    option,
    workingtree,
    )
""")

Lazy importing only works for packages and modules, not classes or functions. It defers the import until you actually need it.

Learning more

Integrating with Bazaar explains how to do such operations as add, commit, log and more.

Reference documentation on some key APIs is provided below. For a more detailed reference, see the complete breezy API documentation.

Mini API Reference

Command Class

Base class for commands. Commands are the heart of the command-line brz interface.

The command object mostly handles the mapping of command-line parameters into one or more breezy operations, and of the results into textual output.

Commands normally don’t have any state. All their arguments are passed in to the run method. (Subclasses may take a different policy if the behaviour of the instance needs to depend on e.g. a shell plugin and not just its Python class.)

The docstring for an actual command should give a single-line summary, then a complete description of the command. A grammar description will be inserted.

aliases

Other accepted names for this command.

takes_args

List of argument forms, marked with whether they are optional, repeated, etc.

For example: ['to_location', 'from_branch?', 'file*'] means:

  • ‘to_location’ is required

  • ‘from_branch’ is optional

  • ‘file’ can be specified 0 or more times

takes_options

List of options that may be given for this command. These can be either strings, referring to globally-defined options, or option objects. Retrieve through options().

hidden

If true, this command isn’t advertised. This is typically for commands intended for expert users.

run()

Actually run the command. This is invoked with the options and arguments bound to keyword parameters.

Return 0 or None if the command was successful, or a non-zero shell error code if not. It’s OK for this method to allow an exception to raise up.

register_command Function

Utility function to help register a command.

param cmd

Command subclass to register

param decorate

If true, allow overriding an existing command of the same name; the old command is returned by this function. Otherwise it is an error to try to override an existing command.