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Installing And Uninstalling Plugins

Overview

In addition plugin can override Plugin.Install() and Plugin.Uninstall() methods to customize installation and uninstallation process: * Install() is called immediately after plugin is installed (copied to the Loupedeck application directory). * Uninstall() is called just before plugin is uninstalled (deleted from the Loupedeck application directory).

What Install() method can do: * Copy photo editing application plugin file(s) to specific directory. * Copy scripts, presets, etc. to use by photo editing application plugin file(s) to specific directory. * Allow specific TCP/IP ports in firewall.

What Uninstall() method can do: * Delete files installed by Install method. * Delete caching files. * Install additional files

If plugin needs to install additional files (photo editing application plugin, scripts, presets, etc.) it can do that in Install() method: * Additional files are added to plugin as "Embedded Resource". * In Install() method plugin can call the following helper methods to extract these file to required directory: * Assembly.ExtractFile(String resourceFileName, String pathName) - extracts embedded resource file to specified location on local drive. * Assembly.FindFile(String resourceFileName) - return full path to embedded resource by file name. * Assembly.GetFilesInFolder(String resourceFolderName) - returns array of full paths to embedded resources located in given folder. * Assembly.ReadTextFile(String resourceName) - reads text from embedded resource text file.

Plugin has access to its Assembly instance via this.Assembly field: 

var pluginFileName = Path.Combine(gimpDirectory, "plug-ins", "loupedeck_plugin.py");
this.Assembly.ExtractFile("Loupedeck.Payload.plugin.loupedeck_plugin.py", pluginFileName);

Install dependencies

Loupedeck plugin should have a "copy" installation performed by copying plugin DLL to a plugin folder under Loupedeck Plugins directory.

If your plugin requires additional class libraries, there are 2 ways to install these additional dependencies: * Use ILMerge tool (recommended). * Copy dependency DLLs together with plugin DLL to the plugin folder and restart the service.

Using installer tool

Starting with version 5.0 Loupedeck supplies specific package installer that does all needed work to install the plugin to Loupedeck Plugin directory and run all needed installation methods. The same tool LoupedeckPluginPackageInstaller.exe can uninstall the previously installed plugin.

The input for Loupedeck Plugin Package Installer is a ZIP archive with .lplug4 extension. To build it you can use the Plugin Tool available at Loupedeck Developer page.

See details here: Distributing the plugin

Restarting the service

Manual plugin installation requires the service to be restarted. If the plugin project was generated with the Loupedeck Plugin Tool, the project's post-build tasks handle this automatically. The service restart can also be manually issued via the command line:

  • Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Loupedeck\Loupedeck2\LoupedeckServiceTool restart
  • macOS: /Applications/Loupedeck.app/Contents/Resources/LoupedeckServiceTool.app --args restart