Plugin Manager ideas
I think maybe there should be a rating system for the Plugin Manager, or maybe a facility for user comments. I'd like to post a comment to the Generate SerialVersionUID plugin saying it only works on Windows, or maybe give it a bad rating for that, but there's no way to do anything like that.
Another option would be an IntelliJ staff recommended plugins meta-category, or a staff rating.
What do you guys think of these ideas?
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Personally, I'd rather not see comments, at least not visible through the plugin manager. I'm all for being able to mark a plugin as 'windows only', or 'platform X only', but I think a comment system gets unwieldy and potentially problematic very fast.
I do like the idea of a counter saying 'installed X times', though -- I find that I occasionally use counters on download sites to find what other people have found useful and check if I've missed anything worthwhile.
- a.
I think the platform thing might be a good idea.
I was thinking more about this and maybe IDEA should just provide a new forum, called Plugin Manager Threads or something, and each plugin would get its own thread automatically upon submission. A link in the Plugin Manager window could take you to the thread for the currently selected plugin, in your web browser. I think this might be the best idea.
Andrew Houghton wrote:
More important information is how many people found it useful (incl. working)
AFTER installing. If the only way to find out what it does and WHETHER it works
in the current build is to install it, then just the install counter is not enough.
What I miss in the PluginManager is "Working In Builds" column (or extracted
information - "working in your build").
r.
Most important would be an info on which version / build of IntelliJ a PlugIn is working, since now a I rarely visit the plugin web page and use the plugin manager instead.
Thomas Gülden
Munich, Germany
+1
"Thomas G?lden" <no_mail@jetbrains.com> wrote in message
news:1807686.1073051017399.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net...
Most important would be an info on which version / build of IntelliJ a
PlugIn is working, since now a I rarely visit the plugin web page and use
the plugin manager instead.
Thomas Gülden
Munich, Germany
Yeah, the 'working in build' functionality would be useful. The only issue here is how to expose that functionality correctly -- if I'm the average user, I don't track the betas, so I don't want to have to think about build #s..
Actually, that reminds me -- I'm a little annoyed that the PluginManager doesn't support versioning and build #s. There's at least one plugin that is listed twice (if I remember correctly) solely because one version is for build X, one version is for build Y.
It seems like a prime opportunity to simply collect all versions of a plugin under a single heading, have the Plugin Manager "suggest" the most applicable one (either the latest version, or the latest version that works with your build), and optionally provide a table where plugin version is one axis, and build # is another, and the cells are some kind of "works" / "doesn't work" icon.
Yeah, dreaming, I know.
IDEA's plugin.xml plugin descriptor files do have "min-version" and "max-version" fields, but they don't apply to build numbers, only to x.x versions. Maybe this should be extended. I don't think anyone wants to keep having to resubmit their plugin every time a new EAP comes out, though, so maybe this isn't a good solution.