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After restarting development on ProPortal Redux, AFS, and starting several new plugins, I soon realized I needed an easier method of creating plugins instead of creating a new file from scratch each time. I ended up writing a very basic plugin shell that I could copy and edit when I needed to make a new plugin. I thought, "a tool to automate this would be extremely helpful!"

So I halted all my other projects and started work on something I call MyBB Plugin Generator!

It is an online-based tool that gathers some information from you (what you would put into your _info() function, for example, as well as other data) and generates a shiny, fancy boilerplate for you to complete with a language file included! It also has a fantastic settings editor that streamlines all the database and array work.

Is there interest in this to release it as a public tool? I only just started development on it a few hours ago and it's coming along very nicely, but I wanted to get some input and suggestions for it if I were to release it publicly.

EDIT: Tomm M suggested looking into using Adobe AIR for a cross-platform solution:

It's been done before. Twice.

(2011-08-28, 03:53 AM)Jordan L. Wrote: [ -> ]It's been done before. Twice.

Ah so.

However, both of those are Windows executables. Mine would be online-based and available for every operating system.

^ may be you can make an improved version
please check above referred two threads so that you might get better ideas ..

If a person was away on vacation and had no internet, stuck with localhost and they wanted something like this to work on, a .exe would come more in handy. Either way, if you could make a web based one, and a standalone one to run on all platforms, that indeed would be very cool.

(2011-08-28, 04:28 AM)Jordan L. Wrote: [ -> ]If a person was away on vacation and had no internet, stuck with localhost and they wanted something like this to work on, a .exe would come more in handy. Either way, if you could make a web based one, and a standalone one to run on all platforms, that indeed would be very cool.

Indeed. I have very limited knowledge of Objective-C/Cocoa/etc (I started developing for Macs a couple weeks ago and haven't improved much) so I could really only do a Windows GUI version. I suppose a command-line version would work on all platforms, but who wants that?

Anyway, I'll probably finish developing this and let it into the wild just because I have most of it finished anyway and I'd like a slightly customized experience for myself.

We'll see how it goes.

Sounds pretty cool! Good luck.

@Steven; sounds great. If you release the code, we can then it on localhosts - hence wliminating the need for a desktop executable.

(2011-08-28, 06:28 AM)euantor Wrote: [ -> ]@Steven; sounds great. If you release the code, we can then it on localhosts - hence wliminating the need for a desktop executable.

This is true; I think I can do everything client-side so it would literally be a single HTML file... Otherwise a PHP file that generates a ZIP file would work.

(2011-08-28, 08:19 AM)Steven Wrote: [ -> ]

(2011-08-28, 06:28 AM)euantor Wrote: [ -> ]@Steven; sounds great. If you release the code, we can then it on localhosts - hence wliminating the need for a desktop executable.

This is true; I think I can do everything client-side so it would literally be a single HTML file... Otherwise a PHP file that generates a ZIP file would work.

Most people who develop plugins have a localhost anyway, right?