Creating a Static Extensions Repository#
To host your own extensions and leverage Blender update system all that is required is to host a static JSON file that is generated by Blender.
JSON#
To generate a valid JSON file use the server generate Blender command-line tool:
blender --command extension server-generate --repo-dir=/path/to/packages
This creates an index.json
listing from all the .zip extensions found in the –repo-dir location.
For more details, read the generated JSON API.
Testing#
To test the generated repository, add a new Remote Repository from the Preferences:
Get Extensions → Repositories → [+] → Add Remote Repository
Paste the location of the generated JSON as the URL. So the example
/path/to/packages
would use the:file:///path/to/packages/index.json
on Linux and macOS.file:///C:/path/to/packages/index.json
on Windows.file://HOST/share/path/to/packages/index.json
for network shares on Windows.
팁
Open file:///
in a web browser and navigate to the repository location
and copy that as the remote repository URL.
Extensions Listing HTML#
The server-generate
command can optionally create a simple website using the --html
argument.
blender --command extension server-generate --repo-dir=/path/to/packages --html
This creates an index.html
file ready to use, listing extensions which
can be dropped into Blender for installation.
Download Links#
In order to support drag and drop for installing from a remote repository, there are a few optional ways to prepare the URLs.
The only strict requirement is that the download URL must end in .zip
.
You can pass different arguments to the URL to give more clues to Blender about what to do with the dropped URL.
- repository:
Link to the JSON file to be used to install the repository in Blender. Supports relative URLs.
- platforms:
Comma-separated list of supported platforms. If omitted, the extension will be available in all operating systems.
- blender_version_min:
Minimum supported Blender version, e.g.,
4.2.0
.- blender_version_max:
Blender version that the extension does not support, earlier versions are supported.
팁
The more details you provide, the better the user experience.
With the exception of the repository
, all the other parameters can be extracted from the extensions manifest.
Those arguments are to be encoded as part of the URL.
- Expected format:
{URL}.zip?repository={repository}&blender_version_min={version_min}&blender_max={version_max_exclusive}&platforms={platform1,platform2}
- Example from self-hosted repository:
http://my-site.com/my-addon.zip?repository=.%2Findex.json&blender_version_min=4.2.0&platforms=windows-x64
- Example from the Extensions Platform:
https://extensions.blender.org/download/sha256:57a6a5f39fa2cc834dc086a27b7b2e572c12fd14f8377fb8bd1c7022df3d7ccb/add-on-amaranth-v1.0.23.zip?repository=%2Fapi%2Fv1%2Fextensions%2F&blender_version_min=4.2.0&platforms=linux-x64%2Cmacos-x64
참고
%2F
and%2C
are simply the url-encoded equivalent of/
and,
respectively.