# Description
This is something that was discussed in the core team meeting last
Wednesday. @ayax79 is building `nu-plugin-polars` with all of the
dataframe commands into a plugin, and there are a lot of them, so it
would help to make the API more similar. At the same time, I think the
`Command` API is just better anyway. I don't think the difference is
justified, and the types for core commands have the benefit of requiring
less `.into()` because they often don't own their data
- Broke `signature()` up into `name()`, `usage()`, `extra_usage()`,
`search_terms()`, `examples()`
- `signature()` returns `nu_protocol::Signature`
- `examples()` returns `Vec<nu_protocol::Example>`
- `PluginSignature` and `PluginExample` no longer need to be used by
plugin developers
# User-Facing Changes
Breaking API for plugins yet again 😄
# Description
This allows plugins to make calls back to the engine to get config,
evaluate closures, and do other things that must be done within the
engine process.
Engine calls can both produce and consume streams as necessary. Closures
passed to plugins can both accept stream input and produce stream output
sent back to the plugin.
Engine calls referring to a plugin call's context can be processed as
long either the response hasn't been received, or the response created
streams that haven't ended yet.
This is a breaking API change for plugins. There are some pretty major
changes to the interface that plugins must implement, including:
1. Plugins now run with `&self` and must be `Sync`. Executing multiple
plugin calls in parallel is supported, and there's a chance that a
closure passed to a plugin could invoke the same plugin. Supporting
state across plugin invocations is left up to the plugin author to do in
whichever way they feel best, but the plugin object itself is still
shared. Even though the engine doesn't run multiple plugin calls through
the same process yet, I still considered it important to break the API
in this way at this stage. We might want to consider an optional
threadpool feature for performance.
2. Plugins take a reference to `EngineInterface`, which can be cloned.
This interface allows plugins to make calls back to the engine,
including for getting config and running closures.
3. Plugins no longer take the `config` parameter. This can be accessed
from the interface via the `.get_plugin_config()` engine call.
# User-Facing Changes
<!-- List of all changes that impact the user experience here. This
helps us keep track of breaking changes. -->
Not only does this have plugin protocol changes, it will require plugins
to make some code changes before they will work again. But on the plus
side, the engine call feature is extensible, and we can add more things
to it as needed.
Plugin maintainers will have to change the trait signature at the very
least. If they were using `config`, they will have to call
`engine.get_plugin_config()` instead.
If they were using the mutable reference to the plugin, they will have
to come up with some strategy to work around it (for example, for `Inc`
I just cloned it). This shouldn't be such a big deal at the moment as
it's not like plugins have ever run as daemons with persistent state in
the past, and they don't in this PR either. But I thought it was
important to make the change before we support plugins as daemons, as an
exclusive mutable reference is not compatible with parallel plugin
calls.
I suggest this gets merged sometime *after* the current pending release,
so that we have some time to adjust to the previous plugin protocol
changes that don't require code changes before making ones that do.
# Tests + Formatting
- 🟢 `toolkit fmt`
- 🟢 `toolkit clippy`
- 🟢 `toolkit test`
- 🟢 `toolkit test stdlib`
# After Submitting
I will document the additional protocol features (`EngineCall`,
`EngineCallResponse`), and constraints on plugin call processing if
engine calls are used - basically, to be aware that an engine call could
result in a nested plugin call, so the plugin should be able to handle
that.
# Description
As title, we can't provide examples for plugin commands, this pr would
make it possible
# User-Facing Changes
Take plugin `nu-example-1` as example:
```
❯ nu-example-1 -h
PluginSignature test 1 for plugin. Returns Value::Nothing
Usage:
> nu-example-1 {flags} <a> <b> (opt) ...(rest)
Flags:
-h, --help - Display the help message for this command
-f, --flag - a flag for the signature
-n, --named <String> - named string
Parameters:
a <int>: required integer value
b <string>: required string value
(optional) opt <int>: Optional number
...rest <string>: rest value string
Examples:
running example with an int value and string value
> nu-example-1 3 bb
```
The examples session is newly added.
## Basic idea behind these changes
when nushell query plugin signatures, plugin just returns it's signature
without any examples, so nushell have no idea about the examples of
plugin commands.
To adding the feature, we just making plugin returns it's signature with
examples.
Before:
```
1. get signature
---------------->
Nushell ------------------ Plugin
<-----------------
2. returns Vec<Signature>
```
After:
```
1. get signature
---------------->
Nushell ------------------ Plugin
<-----------------
2. returns Vec<PluginSignature>
```
When writing plugin signature to $nu.plugin-path:
Serialize `<PluginSignature>` rather than `<Signature>`, which would
enable us to serialize examples to `$nu.plugin-path`
## Shortcoming
It's a breaking changes because `Plugin::signature` is changed, and it
requires plugin authors to change their code for new signatures.
Fortunally it should be easy to change, for rust based plugin, we just
need to make a global replace from word `Signature` to word
`PluginSignature` in their plugin project.
Our content of plugin-path is really large, if one plugin have many
examples, it'd results to larger body of $nu.plugin-path, which is not
really scale. A solution would be save register information in other
binary formats rather than `json`. But I think it'd be another story.
# Tests + Formatting
Don't forget to add tests that cover your changes.
Make sure you've run and fixed any issues with these commands:
- `cargo fmt --all -- --check` to check standard code formatting (`cargo
fmt --all` applies these changes)
- `cargo clippy --workspace -- -D warnings -D clippy::unwrap_used -A
clippy::needless_collect` to check that you're using the standard code
style
- `cargo test --workspace` to check that all tests pass
# After Submitting
If your PR had any user-facing changes, update [the
documentation](https://github.com/nushell/nushell.github.io) after the
PR is merged, if necessary. This will help us keep the docs up to date.
