Installing Script Plugins

Scripts can either be installed manually, by dragging to the Avogadro window:

Scripts can also be installed from GitHub repositories through the “Download Plugins…” command:

Directories

Avogadro will look for plugins either as individual files or subdirectories in a few paths, including system and user directories. Each type of plugin should be in the corresponding subdirectory, e.g.:

The main directory for installing plugins is determined by QStandardPaths::standardLocations(QStandardPaths::AppLocalDataLocation):

• Linux and BSD: ~/.local/share/avogadro/

• macOS: Library/Application\ Support/OpenChemistry/Avogadro

• Windows: C:/Users/USER/AppData/Local/Avogadro

Inside each of these paths, subdirectories for each category of plugin will be scanned for both individual files and directories containing plugin.json files indicating a plugin “package.”

Plugin Packages and Repositories

Since some plugins may require additional scripts or resources to function, they can be installed as an entire directory.

• avogadro-cclib - reads files through the cclib Python module and needs a utils.py helper script

• avogadro-rdkit - packages multiple command scripts together since they all use the rdkit package

All repositories must include a plugin.json file, which is used by Avogadro to indicate the actual plugin scripts (e.g., multiple commands) as well as the Download Plugins… command to provide information to the user:

{
  "author": "Geoffrey Hutchison",
  "version": 1.0,
  "url": "https://github.com/ghutchis/avogadro-scikit-nano",
  "name": "avogadro-scikit-nano",
  "description": "Generate carbon nanomaterial using scikit-nano",
  "type": "commands",
  "commands": [
    { "name": "SWNT", "command": "swnt.py" },
    { "name": "MWNT", "command": "mwnt.py" }
  ]
}

Required sections:

• author: a user-visible attribution of the script

• version: a version number of the script (which is ignored based on GitHub tags or releases)

• url: the URL of the GitHub repository

• name: the name of the plugin. Initial avogadro- prefix will be ignored by the Download Plugins… dialog.

• description: a brief description of the plugin

• type: the category of plugin script, including:

  • charges for charge / electrostatics models

  • commands for menu commands

  • formats for file formats

  • generators for input generators

• commands: a list of key/value pairs to indicate a potential name and the command filename for the script.

Note that any files not listed in the commands list will be ignored by Avogadro during launch.