Godot-proposals: Add support for global/universal addons

[mrjustaguy]

Describe the project you are working on:
For this the specific project doesn't matter, what matters is that I'm using the same addon for several of my projects.

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project:
I see it useful for people (like me) who use a ton of the same addons across different projects because it would speed up things if it auto loaded the addons from some directory i set for the engine (much like you set the engines default project directory)

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation:
It would be a feature that would allow for automatic addon placement in a new project, thus speeding things up for people who use a ton of addons and make a ton of projects.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudocode, mockups, and/or diagrams:
The idea is simple, the user can make a Directory that you label as the universal addon directory in the editor settings (much like you set a directory for default project location), so for every new project when it is created the editor will automatically put the addons (or it could ask which addons you want to put from the directory in when the project is created)

the pseudocode would look something like:

1. Grab editor setting "Universal addon" (or some such name)
2. Gets the new project directory
3. (Upon project creation, optional) popup a list of addons from the directory that can be toggled on/off
4. (in case of 2 implementation) When ok is pressed copy all of the addons toggled on
5. Grabs the addons, places them in the new project directory as an addon

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?:
It can be worked around by making a directory where you store addons and you can just copy them over to the project, so it's not that big of a deal, this would just shave off a few steps making this quicker.

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?:
Because it's an improvement to the add-on/asset library and one couldn't make an add-on for Godot that would do this (I'm fairly sure atleast)

[arkology]

Related PR: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/35432

[MCrafterzz]

Hasn't this been suggested lots of times already....

[mrjustaguy]

I guess it has been suggested before.. but a different path to doing so..

[Xrayez]

From what I've heard (mind you, just rumors), core devs planned a different approach with those plugins to be treated as regular projects (which could be nested), going for the approach inspired by the node-based system.

[maciek134]

@akien-mga asking you since you explained it nicely in the closed PR - is @Xrayez right about the approach this should take? I'd love to have this feature and I'll be happy to create a PR, but I'd like it to be mergable. Could it be as simple as treating all projects in HOME/godot/plugins as global plugins, or did you have something else in mind?

[aaronfranke]

so for every new project when it is created the editor will automatically put the addons

What about a way for addons to be used globally, but not installed in each project? For example, with https://github.com/godotengine/godot-git-plugin, it doesn't really have a purpose of being inside the project aside from that being the only supported option. This addon could be deleted from the project and the project would still work fine, so it doesn't need to be copied into the project if there was a system to allow it to exist elsewhere.

[me2beats]

could global addons just to be located somewhere, say in some "global plugins dir" then the user could specify what directory to use as global plugins dir and after that when creating or loading a project Godot enables these global plugins?

also maybe there could be some API methods like
set_global_project_dir
enable_global_project_plugin
etc

About UI implementation:
It could be a plugins list in Global Settings — Plugins, like we have it in Project Settings — Plugins
or implemented as one Plugins List (for both Project and Global plugins), but then it shouldn't be located in Project Settings menu.

I believe the ability to have global plugins would be handy.

But on the other hand, there are several concerns:

1) safety of other projects. for example, if a global plugin can delete the content of projects, then when such a plugin is activated, each open or loaded project will be deleted.
in this case, one need to be as careful as possible when using third-party projects that use global plugins.

2) it may increase projects coupling, this can be compared to a singleton pattern, which, if used incorrectly, easily turns into an anti-pattern and only creates more problems.

[silentorb]

One benefit of global plugins is, depending on how they were implemented, they could remove the pressure to add nice-to-have plugins into the Godot core.

For other game engines such as Unreal and Unity, many features that would be considered core are actually plugins that are installed and enabled by default. Over the years Blender has transitioned to a similar structure.

If Godot supported the ability for someone to zip a collection of plugins with the Godot executable, that would allow a variety of different Godot installations to choose from, both official and third-party, similar to Linux distros.

That way a beginning developer could download an installation with a hundred enabled plugins while the Godot core remained light and minimal.

That would also give core developers the option to convert some core modules into plugins, which in turn would allow game developers to toggle those modules without compiling a custom executable.

[Calinou]

We discussed this yesterday in the Godot proposal meeting. We acknowledge it's a desired feature and could be useful, but at the same time, we're wary about uses of the "global add-ons" feature for add-ons that should clearly be stored within the project. In other words, your project might break if it relies on global add-ons but other people in your team forget to install them. We don't want to require people to scour the Internet manually to find add-ons before they can start working on a project.

To summarize, we think "global add-ons" work best for editor-only features that aren't related to your project, not features that will be exported into the final project.

That would also give core developers the option to convert some core modules into plugins, which in turn would allow game developers to toggle those modules without compiling a custom executable.

Global add-ons aren't a strict requirement for moving core features to add-ons. See godot-interpolatedcamera3d for an example.
If this add-on was to be used as a "global add-on" by someone, this could cause projects to break unexpectedly when switching PCs or working in a team. To give a counterpart to Node.js, it's the same issue as using npm install -g for project-specific dependencies :slightly_smiling_face:

For what it's worth, the Node.js community is attempting to fight this problem by disallowing the use of globally-installed modules in the project itself. It will take a while for them to fully solve this issue, though.

[Two-Tone]

No, but to a large number of users they won't know that the once standard
features are now add-ons they have to manually download and enable for each
project, which will create some ugly, negative word of mouth that will be
hard to fight.

On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 3:37 AM Hugo Locurcio [e-mail]
wrote:

That would also give core developers the option to convert some core
modules into plugins, which in turn would allow game developers to toggle
those modules without compiling a custom executable.

Global add-ons aren't a strict requirement for moving core features to
add-ons.

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[johannesgunnar]

In other words, your project might break if it relies on global add-ons but other people in your team forget to install them. We don't want to require people to scour the Internet manually to find add-ons before they can start working on a project.

I am all in for global add ons, but as seems to be the consensus here, we need to be careful. I've had that exact same experience with PureData back in the day. I even have problems viewing my own old Pure Data projects as I've lost some of the global plugins and can't find them online anymore. :/