[Developers] Creation of plugins

[Bert Bril]

Hi all,


Satyaki and I made a plugin that shows a few uses of DataPointSet and 
surrounding objects. It's in 4.1.0: the uiDPSDemo plugin. To activate 
it, simply move the *.tut.alo from the 'disabled' directory in 
plugins/platform_dir into the plugins/platform_dir itself.


I have 'recorded' what I did to create this plugin (on Linux):

1) Copied the 'uiHello' plugin directory to uiDPSDemo
   - rename uihellopi.cc to uidpsdemo.cc
   - edit Makefile, change uihellopi.cc to uidpsdemopi.cc, remove the
     'PLAN_A' stuff

2) Edit uidpsdemopi.cc
   - Find all 'Hello', replace (mostly with 'DPSDemo')
   - Edit the plugin info
   - Rename the callback function to uiDPSDemoMgr::doIt.
     At this point in time, do nothing (just a uiMSG().error)
   - Remove everything but the bare necessities
   - Add menu item to 'Analysis' menu.

3) Make and use the plugin
   - 'make' creates libuiDPSDemo.so
   - link the plugin's .so to the libs directory in plugins/lux64
   - in plugins/lux64, create odmain.dpsdemo.alo with only one line:
     uiDPSDemo
     (Note: in the release, we added a uiDPSDemo line to the tut .alo
     files, but this is how you normally do it).
   - Run OpendTect. Analysis menu now contains 'DataPointSet demo'.
   - Add everything to CVS

I saved this state; you can fetch it at:
ftp://ftp.opendtect.org/pub/src/uidpsdemo_1.tgz


4) Make real 'payload'
   - Copied a .h and .cc file with a uiDialog (used uiTools/uiselsimple)
     to uidpsdemo.h and uidpsdemo.cc
   - edit the files; make an almost empty dialog with a uiLabel
   - edit uidpsdemopi.cc to include uidpsdemo.h and use uiDPSDemoDlg.
     made plugin info comment variable to show how to do that.
   - Copy an icon in data/icons.Default to dpsdemo.png, and change it
     using kolourpaint.
   - now use it for menu and toolbar.
   - make, and start OpendTect to see this working
   - add uidpsdemo.* and icon to CVS, and check in the lot

Saved to:
ftp://ftp.opendtect.org/pub/src/uidpsdemo_2.tgz
(icon must go into data/icons.Default)

... and then the real implementation started ...


I'll explain a few things about the DPS demo plugin, later.


Bert

-- 
-- Bert Bril / OpendTect developer at dGB
-- mailto:Bert.Bril at opendtect.org , http://opendtect.org