improved docs, add a tutorial for writing plugins

[ikiwiki.git] / doc / plugins / install.mdwn

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+[[meta title="Installing third party plugins"]]
+
+Most ikiwiki plugins are perl modules and should be installed somewhere in
+the perl module search path. See the @INC list at the end of the output of
+`perl -V` for a list of the directories in that path. All plugins are in
+the IkiWiki::Plugin namespace, so they go in a IkiWiki/Plugin subdirectory
+inside the perl search path. For example, if your perl looks in
+`/usr/local/lib/site_perl` for modules, you can locally install ikiwiki
+plugins to `/usr/local/lib/site_perl/IkiWiki/Plugin`
+
+You can use the `libdir` configuration option to add a directory to the
+search path. For example, if you set `libdir` to `/home/you/.ikiwiki/`,
+then ikiwiki will look for plugins in `/home/you/.ikiwiki/IkiWiki/Plugins`.
+
+Ikiwiki also supports plugins that are external programs. These are
+typically written in some other language than perl. Ikiwiki searches for
+these in `/usr/lib/ikiwiki/plugins` by default. If `libdir` is set, it will
+also look under that directory, for example in `/home/you/.ikiwiki/plugins`.
+Note that this type of plugin has to be executable for ikiwiki to use it.