$HOME/.bazaar/plugins Path Not Used by Default

[Vincent Ladeuil]

>>>>> Tom Browder <tom.browder at gmail.com> writes:

    > On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 09:25, John Arbash Meinel
    > <john at arbash-meinel.com> wrote:
    >> On 10/15/2010 7:37 AM, Tom Browder wrote:
    >>> According to the bzr docs, on *nix, directory $BZR_HOME ($HOME/.bazaar
    >>> by default), subdirectory "plugins" is, by default, searched for
    >>> plugins--but that doesn't work for me (using bzr 2.2.1).
    > ...
    >> If you define BZR_PLUGIN_PATH then it overrides whatever default
    >> $HOME/.bazaar/plugins directory.

    > Okay, I see see that's true now--but I can't find that said in the
    > docs (lots of docs, though).

    >> I certainly use the latter directory all the time, across many versions
    >> of bzr. Do you care to dig deeper into this?

    > Yes, I would.

    > IMHO, the $BZR_HOME/plugins directory ought to always be searched
    > last, even if BZR_PLUGIN path is defined (unless the directory is
    > already defined in BZR_PLUGIN_PATH).   I use the BZR_PLUGIN_PATH for
    > system-wide plugins (and I imagine others do, too) and of course user
    > plugin conflicts may appear, but that is the user's problem.

Thanks for digging this subject !

So, here is the rationale as documented in the code:

    # Ad-Hoc default: core is not overriden by site but user can overrides both
    # The rationale is that:
    # - 'site' comes last, because these plugins should always be available and
    #   are supposed to be in sync with the bzr installed on site.
    # - 'core' comes before 'site' so that running bzr from sources or a user
    #   installed version overrides the site version.
    # - 'user' comes first, because... user is always right.
    # - the above rules clearly defines which plugin version will be loaded if
    #   several exist. Yet, it is sometimes desirable to disable some directory
    #   so that a set of plugins is disabled as once. This can be done via
    #   -site, -core, -user.

'site' is not clearly defined across all the platforms, on windows in
particular we didn't reach an agreement on how it should be implemented
in the windows installer and even on *nix things are a bit blurry.

But in any case, BZR_PLUGIN_PATH gives full control to the user.

If you can find a better way to describe this in the doc, a patch will
be be warmly welcome.

   Vincent