Finding out what plugins are used by a gh document

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on July 15, 2017 at 11:54pm

Just by looking at a gh file, or while that file is loaded in Grasshopper?

Permalink Reply by WT4 on July 16, 2017 at 4:21am

I thought I could open up a gh or a gha definition using a text editor but both are saved in binary format. So only recourse is when it is loaded in grasshopper.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on July 16, 2017 at 1:31pm

No, you can 'read' a binary gh file using GH_IO.dll, which does not depend on any non-framework libraries. You can even use the same assembly to save the file again as xml, if you'd rather parse a non-type-safe document.

Permalink Reply by Chris Hanley on July 16, 2017 at 11:03am

There are a few plugins that can get the plug-ins used in the active grasshopper definition.  Wombat and metahopper are two that I know of, there might be more.  

I started working on one that does something similar, and then writes, (serializes) the information to a text panel.

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/override-disable-zui-disp...

Granted, this is predicated on loading the plugin, then running it within the grasshopper definition.  The outcome is that, since the info is written to a text panel, it remains persistent within the file.  So...as long as the component is run, and the file is saved, the next person who opens the file, even if they are missing the plug-in, will have a text panel that lists the components that were used.

Since grasshopper already does this process when opening a file, maybe a future feature addition could be to capture that info somehow?  I know that in the current GH version in Rhino 6, there is an "install" feature to install missing plugins, but I believe that only looks at the food4rhino site?  

Permalink Reply by WT4 on July 17, 2017 at 1:31am

Just what I needed.  Thank you.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on July 17, 2017 at 2:54am

I know that in the current GH version in Rhino 6, there is an "install" feature to install missing plugins, but I believe that only looks at the food4rhino site?  

I think it only looks at some custom server somewhere. It's still in the test phase. I believe the ultimate idea is to look on Food4Rhino, and maybe add other repositories are are freely accessible.

Permalink Reply by WT4 on July 17, 2017 at 4:29am

OK.  Thank yo.