hey @cryptix, sorry I didn't see tis (we need to build better notifications in patchbay huh)

yes I'm still using patchbay-builder.
I'm quite amarue with the electron-builder stuff, I don't understand the internal workings of it yet.

correct, it does complain loudly if plugins are missing. Can't remember what exactly, probably a throw...

Keen to try it. I think what I'm going to go straight for is bundling that into an installer. I see the main thing we need before it's in the master branch is stability to be able to build mac / linux / windows installers which play nice.

i think if we have a manifest type file like shell-plugins.js or whatever, then in the future we can do some cool fancy stuff where you tell shell what apps you're gonna be running and programmatically ensure it's running a minimal set... or if shell is already running then easily check you've got the min-set. Lots of possibilities!

I think what I'm going to go straight for is bundling that into an installer.

I haven't seen the windows installer framework, ideally we could just add another .exe to be deployed and be done with it, same for darwin. Are you still using https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay-builder for this? I can keep that in mind/work on it as I polish #scuttle-shell more.

The remaining doozy is: how to bundle install systrayhelper. I don't think it can be started from inside the appImage, but then again so is electron... have to do more reading on the format.

The fallback would be to just copy it out of the image, maybe into .ssb/contrib/systrayhelper and start it from there.

yes, I think it is!

I assume the injector throws an error or calls with its cb with cb(new Err(plugin missing: ${name}, null)?

I saw your old branch and revived it as scuttleShellTest.
It uses the shell's API to start it instead of spawn(), which means it should also be bundled when you install pbay standalone.
You can alrady try it if you like.

I'll try and add the injector to test plugin availablility.

I've done something similar to this for scuttle-inject (which takes an sbot as a dep, and also checks that sbot has the right plugins):

e.g. https://github.com/blockades/scuttle-dark-crystal/blob/master/index.js#L4 :

const inject = require('scuttle-inject')

const methods = require('./methods')
const PLUGIN_DEPS = ['private', 'query', 'backlinks']

module.exports = function (server, opts) {
  return inject(server, methods, PLUGIN_DEPS)
}

for checking plugins are installed I would do that here (basically that file is used to check if an sbot is running, and start shell if there isn't one)
https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay/blob/full-scutle-shell/background-process.js#L16 (this is a branch I made ages ago to test scuttle-shell)
Note I've got the plugins that were installed commented out, but these should be extracted into some commonly named file like shell-plugins.js in our root which we read and check against.

Is this what you were asking @cryptix ?

@mix / @matt: How about make a list of plugins that apps can specify, which is tested for during ssb-client setup?

In tale:net we have this which is pretty barebone but get's the job done.

Right now it can be pretty hard to figure out what is missing when starting patchbay with a missing plugin but I have no idea where I would add the above code in pcore or where such a list would go in the clients.