Introduction

MonoDevelop (and SharpDevelop) have been written so that they can be easily extended by others. This can be accomplished by doing two simple things. First, by creating an assembly (dll) containing the code for your addin. Second, providing an .addin XML file that maps your code into MonoDevelop. There is a detailed pdf available at SharpDevelop's website here that you will want to read for a full understanding of the entire system and possiblities. The SharpDevelop book has information on this as well. This is intended as a simple and quick overview.

Terms

AddIn - what many other systems refer to as a plugin. In this case the whole application is also a plugin
Pad - content area like the project browser or output pad.
View - main content area, like the SourceEditor.
Language binding - compilation, execution, and project management for a programming language
Service - reponsible for one part of the program, for example the MessageService is delegated the reponsiblity of displaying messages to the user.

AddIn assembly

In your code you can extend the IDE at pretty much any point. Some common things would be to extend the menus, pads, views, services, commands, etc. I recommend looking at src/AddIns/ for a few examples. In most cases you will simply inherit from an abstract class or implement an interface for the various parts you are extending. For example, a new service could be defined as:

using System;
using MonoDevelop.Core.Services;

namespace MonoDevelop.Services;
{
	public class ExampleService : AbstractService
	{
		// Do stuff here
	}
}

Here is a list of some of the common classes to extend for an AddIn: 

./Core/src/MonoDevelop.Base/Gui/Dialogs/AbstractOptionPanel.cs
./Core/src/MonoDevelop.Base/Gui/Dialogs/Wizard/AbstractWizardPanel.cs
./Core/src/MonoDevelop.Base/Gui/Pads/ClassScout/BrowserNode/AbstractClassScoutNode.cs
./Core/src/MonoDevelop.Base/Gui/Pads/ProjectBrowser/BrowserNode/AbstractBrowserNode.cs
./Core/src/MonoDevelop.Base/Gui/AbstractBaseViewContent.cs
./Core/src/MonoDevelop.Base/Gui/AbstractPadContent.cs
./Core/src/MonoDevelop.Base/Gui/AbstractViewContent.cs
./Core/src/MonoDevelop.Base/Gui/AbstractSecondaryViewContent.cs

.addin.xml file

Note: MonoDevelop had to change to .addin.xml extension for using gettext in translations. SharpDevelop uses .addin

The addin file basically maps the "entry" points of your code into the various parts of the IDE. You specify services to load, append menus in a certain place, and virtually everything else. Since the entire application is an AddIn there is no limit. It supports conditional directives and other advanced constructs. In the following sample MonoDevelopNunit.addin.xml file, you can see it specifies the name of the assembly to load, specifies a service to load into the /Workspace/Services node, two views and some menus. Last, it is important to note the class attribute that is used to specify the type to instantiate for that part of the AddIn.

<AddIn name = "MonoDevelop Nunit" author = "John Luke" copyright = "GPL" url = "http://monodevelop.com" description = "NUnit testing tool" version = "0.2"> <Runtime> <Import assembly="MonoDevelop.Nunit.dll"/> </Runtime> <Extension path="/Workspace/Services"> <Class id = "NunitService" class = "MonoDevelop.Services.NunitService"/> </Extension> <Extension path="/SharpDevelop/Workbench/Views"> <Class id = "NunitTestTree" class = "MonoDevelop.Nunit.Gui.TestTree"/> <Class id = "NunitResultTree" class = "MonoDevelop.Nunit.Gui.ResultTree"/> </Extension> <Extension path="/SharpDevelop/Workbench/MainMenu/Tools"> <MenuItem id = "NunitMenu" label = "NUnit" insertafter = "ExternalTools" insertbefore = "Options"> <MenuItem id = "LoadTestAssembly" _label = "Load Assembly" shortcut = "" class = "MonoDevelop.Commands.NunitLoadAssembly" /> <MenuItem id = "NunitRunTests" _label = "Run Tests" shortcut = "" class = "MonoDevelop.Commands.NunitRunTests" /> </MenuItem> </Extension> </AddIn>

AddIn tree

The various addins are loaded and merge into an AddInTree, which is how the IDE knows what and where to load. Look at build/AddIns/SharpDevelopCore.addin.xml to see the various places to attach your addin, such as the menu items.

Building and installing

We currently support both running in a self-contained build/ directory as well as installing to $(prefix)/lib/monodevelop so you will want to make sure both your .addin.xml file and .dll are placed into the AddIn directory in both places. Note: this this may change at some point in the future.

For those not familiar with autoconf/automake here is a brief description of what you need to do, if you are wanting to add your addin to the current build process. This will not be required when we are self-hosting. Have a Makefile.am that compiles and installs your dll and addin.xml files. I highly recommend you copy one of the existing ones as a reference. Add path/to/your/addin/Makefile to the AC_OUTPUT section of configure.in. This creates the Makefile from Makefile.am. In the parent directory of your addin add your directory to the SUBDIRS variable. If you are especially prudent you can make sure make distcheck from the top directory still works.

Existing Examples

Caveats

Although SharpDevelop and MonoDevelop currently use the same format this may not always be the case. Also, while non-gui addins could possibly be reused, MonoDevelop and SharpDevelop use different GUI toolkits that will likely prevent sharing many things. Any suggestions on making sharing things as easy as possible would be appreciated.

Internationalization

Since we are using Gettext and not resources, you will want to read the translation guide as that is handled in a different way than SharpDevelop, and deserves its own explanation.

AddIn ideas

There are various things that would be nice to have implemented as addins. Here is a brief list of the top of my head.

Credits, License, Errata

Send comments to john.luke@gmail.com or the monodevelop mailing list.

Licensed under the MIT License

Last updated March 18, 2005