I want to start developing plugins...but how?

[OrenShapir]

Hi all,

I moved from SageTV after 12 years and now I have a working NPVR server (3 analog STBs + 1 DVB-S) & client across my home.
All in all the move was NOT painfull as I expected it to be survived the WAF...

I already "played" with skins and translation (I need Hebrew & right-to-left skin) - all done, no problem.
I already made a tool for managing shows directly in the NPVR DB - moving, renaming, etc.

But now I want to start developing new plugins - as I know C++ & VB/XOJO.
(working for the last 3 years with XOJO for its cross platform feature so the I don't feel at home in the Visual Studio environment)
I read every post and the WIKI but still...I don't know how to start :confused:

1. What free programming environment to install? Visual studio express 2013 or Visual studio Community 2013?
2. Do I need more files to build the DLL? (Tried the Test4 & TEST3 projects SUB posted under visual studio express 2013 and got errors while building - NUTILITY missing???)
3. Are there any open source plugins that I can learn from?

Thanks!
Oren.

[imilne]

PM me your email address and I'll send you the source for my stuff. Not that it's the best example of plugin coding, but it'll hopefully help you get started.

I use VS express 2012 I think (don't have it in front of me right now). You need to import or link to the NUtility and NShared DLLs in NPVR's install folder, telling it not to make local copies.

Iain

[sub]

Hi Oren.

We don't have a lot of great samples, but I'm always happy to help developers through creating plugins. Just ask, and I'll give you as much help as you need. There is also a couple of decent threads in this subforum in the past with good info.

The Test3/Test4 sample plugins show most of core things that developers will need to be able to do. As imilne mentioned above, you probably just need to add references to NUtility.dll and NShared.dll. I think the references are already there, but they point to the different locations I have these DLLs on my development environment.

I'm using VS2012, but I'm pretty sure you'll be fine using VS2013 community/express.

[OrenShapir]

Thanks imiline and sub!
I'll give it a try and report back ...

Oren.

[mvallevand]

I don't think you can target .NET 4.0 with VS 2013 so you will shut out XP users.

Martin

[sub]

I don't think you can target .NET 4.0 with VS 2013 so you will shut out XP users.

One of my machines has VS2013 installed, and it's showing .NET 4.0 etc as options.

[mvallevand]

One of my machines has VS2013 installed, and it's showing .NET 4.0 etc as options.

Right it wasn't there originally when I tried it but I see here http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/produc...ty-vs.aspx that it has been added.

Martin