rs-rich-plugin-api

The plugin contract for rs-rich, the Rust port of Python's rich.

A plugin is a type that implements [Plugin]: it describes itself with PluginMetadata and registers what it adds through a PluginRegistrar:

• regex highlighters, applied to printed text;
• code highlighters (rich::CodeHighlighter), selectable by name;
• named themes and box styles;
• named source renderers, which turn text (a diagram, a data file) into a renderable;
• renderers for Markdown code fences of a given language;
• named text transforms (TextTransform), which a host chains into a pipeline.
• named interactive components (PluginComponent, in the component module), which an app mounts beside the built-in components of rs-rich-interact.

This crate depends only on rs-rich. A plugin never depends on rs-rich-ext, which is where plugins are hosted:

let mut registry = rich_ext::ExtensionRegistry::with_defaults();
registry.add_plugin(&my_plugin::MyPlugin)?;
registry.install(&mut console);

Registration is explicit by default. Each plugin declares the PLUGIN_API_VERSION it was built for, and the host refuses a plugin built for a different one. Two more ways in are opt-in:

• Linked plugins. rich_plugin_api::export_plugin!(MyPlugin); registers a plugin for link-time collection (through inventory). A host that calls ExtensionRegistry::with_linked_plugins() adds every linked plugin, sorted by id; a duplicate id is an error.
• Runtime plugins. The abi module is a small, versioned, text-only ABI for plugins loaded from a file: a native library (export_dylib_plugin! writes its C entry point, with no unsafe code in the plugin) or a sandboxed WASM module. They may contribute transforms, highlighters and Markdown fence renderers that return markup or ANSI (not components, which keep state); the host sanitizes everything they return. Loading is in rs-rich-ext, behind its dylib-plugins and wasm-plugins features. See examples/dylib-plugin and examples/wasm/shout.wat in the repository.

Native plugins run arbitrary code in the host process: load one only if you would run it as a program.

The API is at 0.0.x and still moving. See the plugin guide.