Separate plugins from software

[hohwille]

We should move plugins from software to their own top-level plugins folder as they are something different to the rest we put in software.

Current layout:

/ DEVON_IDE_HOME
└──/ software
   ├──/ az
   ├──/ cobigen-cli
   ├──/ dotnet
   ├──/ eclipse
   ├──/ eclipse-plugins
   ├──/ extra
   ├──/ intellij
   ├──/ intellij-plugins
   ├──/ java
   ├──/ maven
   ├──/ vscode
   └──/ vscode-extensions

New layout proposed by this issue:

/ DEVON_IDE_HOME
├──/ plugins
|  ├──/ eclipse
|  ├──/ intellij
|  └──/ vscode
└──/ software
   ├──/ az
   ├──/ cobigen-cli
   ├──/ dotnet
   ├──/ eclipse
   ├──/ extra
   ├──/ intellij
   ├──/ java
   ├──/ maven
   └──/ vscode

This story affects all commandlets that can have plugins:

• android-studio
• eclipse
• intellij
• vscode

[maybeec]

I would not agree to that. What is the benefit? You might even run into incompatibility issues if someone does a major upgrade of an ide causing the ide not to start anymore.

[hohwille]

I would not agree to that. What is the benefit? You might even run into incompatibility issues if someone does a major upgrade of an ide causing the ide not to start anymore.

Thanks for your feedback, I try to explain more... not part of this story but for the rationale:

In the future we will enable shared repository by default (for the real solution of #1082).
Then software folder will only contain symbolic links to software tool-edition versions from the central shared software repository (except for the extra folder that we could also eliminate entirely or move from software/extra to extra-software).
Each tool can then have "dependencies" (e.g. jenkins version x1 needs java version j1 while eclipse version e1 needs java version j2 while sonarqube version s1 needs java version j3 causing severe conflicts if j1!=j2!=j3.

For compatibility we introduced migration scripts. We are using this feature also to resolve other "incompatibilities" like #1087.

[hohwille]

While we have implemented the story for intellij, eclipse and vscode now that all is released, I have tested android-studio and notice that it does not implement this plugin separation. As android-studio was in the process of being added (#895) while we were working on this story, I did not notice that it has been forgotten though it was explicitly mentioned in the story description...

[hohwille]

I better create a new story for that, as this story is already labelled with milestone 2023.07.001 so reopening and adding changes to the next release will fake the release history and cause confusion.