Extensions Platform - Alpha launch

Feature & Design Feedback
45

For anyone else looking to replace the old addon development workflow where you symlinked a folder under source control into Blender’s addons/ folder so it would update when you switch branches, this is how you do it.

Instructions for installing extension via symlink

  1. Open Preferences ‣ Extensions and click the gear in the top right corner. Make sure there is a local repository (add one if there isn’t). The default one is called “User Default”. Click Advanced and note the path to the extension folder that appears there.

    For example, on Linux I got ~/.config/blender/4.2/extensions/user_default.

  2. Go to that folder (create it if it doesn’t exist), and create a symlink to your extension folder containing the blender_manifest.toml file. The name of the symlink should be the id from the manifest file. For example

    $ cd /path/to/my/extension
$ grep '^id' blender_manifest.toml
id = "my_extension_id"
$ cd ~/.config/blender/4.2/extensions/user_default
$ ln -s /path/to/my/extension my_extension_id

  3. Back in the Preferences ‣ Extensions dialogue, click the gear, select the local repo you used, and hit the Refresh/Check for Updates button (looks sort of like ↻). Your extension should now appear in the extension list. Use the search to find it, and enable it by ticking the checkbox next to its name.

1 Like