Creating an Extensions Repository#
Third party sites that wish to support extensions in Blender can do so in two ways:
Fork the entire Extensions Website as a start point; or
Host a JSON file listing all the packages of your repository.
To generate a valid JSON file you can use the command-line tool:
blender --command extension server-generate --repo-dir=/path/to/packages
This creates a listing from all the packages found in the specified location.
See server-generate docs.
Example of what the JSON is expected to look like:
{
"version": "v1",
"blocklist": [],
"data": [
{
"id": "blender_kitsu",
"name": "Blender Kitsu",
"tagline": "Pipeline management for projects collaboration",
"version": "0.1.5-alpha+f52258de",
"type": "add-on",
"archive_size": 856650,
"archive_hash": "sha256:3d2972a6f6482e3c502273434ca53eec0c5ab3dae628b55c101c95a4bc4e15b2",
"archive_url": "https://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/blender-kitsu/0.1.5-alpha+f52258de/download/",
"blender_version_min": "4.2.0",
"maintainer": "Blender Studio",
"tags": ["Pipeline"],
"license": ["SPDX:GPL-3.0-or-later"],
"website": "https://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/blender-kitsu/",
"schema_version": "1.0.0"
}
]
}
Just like for the manifest file, the optional fields (e.g., blender_version_max) are either to have a value
or should be omitted from the entries.
For the official Extensions Platform, the website value is the page of the extension in the online platform.
Even if the manifest points to the project specific website.
Примечание
Any remote repository is expected to follow the latest API.
Multiple Versions#
When Blender fetches the extensions listing it passes the following arguments to make sure only compatible extensions are listed:
platformblender_version
This means that servers which can handle these arguments will have a single entry per-extension on the listing.
For static generated JSONs this is not supported. Instead, the JSON generated with the server-generate command will display all available versions for all the unique combinations of platforms.
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 dragged URL.
- repository:
Link to the JSON file to be used to install the repository on Blender. It supports relative URLs.
- platforms:
Comma-separated list of supported platforms. If omitted, the extension will be available in all operating systems.
- blender_версия_мин:
Minimum supported Blender version.
- blender_version_max:
Blender version that the extension does not support, earlier versions are supported.
Совет
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,...>- Пример:
https://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/amaranth-toolset/1.0.23/download/add-on-amaranth-toolset-v1.0.23.zip?repository=/api/v1/extensions/&blender_version_min=4.2.0&platforms=linux-x64,macos-x64
HTML Example#
For a sample of the HTML code you can use to list all the extensions in the repository, use the html option
when generating the server.
blender --command extension server-generate --repo-dir=/path/to/packages --html
This creates a download.html file with all the extra URLs parameters ready to use.