udisks.xplr - Device/mount management in xplr using UDisks2

[LordMZTE]

udisks.xplr is a plugin that allows managing devices using the ubiquitous UDisks2 system, as common GUI file managers would allow you to do.

This one was quite challenging because it's mostly not written in Lua but C++ so it could talk directly to udisksd. As a question on the side, how are we planning to handle plugins that need a compilation step like mine does? The installation procedure for my plugin is currently rather annoying.

[LordMZTE]

Another pain point I had during development which I'd like to note is that my plugin, which uses a seconh thread due to event loop shenanigans has no way to send messages to xplr. I needed messaging to tell xplr to redraw when things change asynchronously, which I have for now implemented by sending a SIGWINCH to the current process which triggers a redraw.

[sayanarijit]

Thank you for sharing the plugin.

As a question on the side, how are we planning to handle plugins that need a compilation step like mine does? The installation procedure for my plugin is currently rather annoying.

xplr probably won't have a built-in plugin manager, so compilation steps can be added in the external plugin manager implementations, like https://github.com/dtomvan/xpm.xplr.
Nix users can use a module like #766.
Another way would be to call a widely adopted CLI or library which users can easily install via their preferred package manager.

Another pain point I had during development which I'd like to note is that my plugin, which uses a seconh thread due to event loop shenanigans has no way to send messages to xplr. I needed messaging to tell xplr to redraw when things change asynchronously, which I have for now implemented by sending a SIGWINCH to the current process which triggers a redraw.

Is it a problem if xplr freezes for a short time while the mount/umount operation is going on? If yes, the current hack seems to be the best way to handle it.

[BirdeeHub]

to add to this, luarocks is a great way to add compile steps for C/C++, and adding things to luarocks also allows nix users to generate the derivation for it with a tool

This was mentioned in your docs of course but felt I should state that it makes things easier for nix too :) (sorry for jumping threads, got pinged)

[LordMZTE]

A Nix package is already in place! All you need to do to set that up at the moment is to install the package anywhere, and then in your config:

require("udisks").setup {
    install_path = require "udisks.nix_path"
}

This is obviously not ideal yet. I'll probably look into Luarocks in the future. Thanks for the feedback!