Blacklisting of Plugins

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For your information, the next release of pimatic will contain a blacklist filter for the list of available plugins displayed by the pimatic frontend to improve the overall usability of pimatic. The idea is to avoid users will install malfunctional, incompatible, redundant, or retired plugins. Note, plugins not listed as available plugins can still be installed from the command line. At a later stage this mechanism may also be applied for the list of plugins displayed on the web site.

Provisional criterias for blacklisting are:

• Plugin has been retired by the maintainer, e.g. note as part of README
• Plugin does not support pimatic 0.9
• Plugin has no sensible functionality, e.g. just a clone of the plugin template project
• Plugin is redundant, e.g a published fork of plugin project with no extra functionality compared to the original project
• Plugin cannot be installed without errors and plugin is no longer maintained
• Plugin does has been published without source code or licensing information
• Plugin does not provide the minimal documentation required to use the plugin
• Plugin is for a very specific (private) use case or for proprietary hardware and it is not reproducible for other users how to use it
• Plugin has no activity for more than 2 years and there are pending, unanswered issues
• Plugin does not provide any useful functionality, e.g. just a clone of the plugin template

Current candidates for blacklisting are:

• “pimatic-anymote”, no-activity, issue filed
• “pimatic-easybox”, - retired
• “pimatic-hongkongpollution”, - retired
• “pimatic-nikoniko”, - no functionality
• “pimatic-smartmeter-old”, - does not support pimatic 0.9
• “pimatic-sms”, - retired
• “pimatic-slack”, - retired
• “pimatic-yoctopuce”, retired, does not support pimatic 0.9
• “pimatic-vr-harmonyhub” - redundant
• “pimatic-ouimeaux” - no activity, does not support pimatic 0.9, issue filed
• “pimatic-otgw” - no activity, does not support pimatic 0.9, issue filed
• “pimatic-can” - no README, no license info, no source code
• “pimatic-diy-controls” - private use, no README
• “pimatic-ziggo-mediabox” - does not support pimatic 0.9, no README - issues have been filed
• “pimatic-uber” - does not work
• “pimatic-mqtt-simple” - retired
• “pimatic-emon” - does not support pimatic 0.9, no activity
• “pimatic-nikoniko” - no functionality, no README, no activity

Any objections to this, suggestions, complaints, etc. will be seriously considered.

Pimatic-vr-harmonyhub implements one working device the plugin pimatic-harmony hub does not have (well - it is there but not working) . It is not redundant.

@quotschmacher OK, seems like the last release published by @thex for pimatic-harmonyhub is older than the release for pimatic-vr-harmonyhub. The codebase in the repo, however, is identical. If the additional device does not work and pimatic-vr-harmonyhub is not actively maintained it is pretty redundant.

@mwittig the device works in vr-harmonyhub and not in harmonyhub.
And with a fresh install of both plugins:

@quotschmacher said in Blacklisting of Plugins:

works in vr-harmonyhub and not in harmonyhub

Sorry, for misreading your previous post!
@thex can you please publish a new version of pimatic-harmonyhub, or did you actively hand over to vincentriemer?

@mwittig i’m actually about to implement a new feature to the harmonyhub plugin and while doing this, i copied the device from vincentriemer to the plugin from @thex . pull request will be there, when i’m finished. then you could say that the plugin from vincent is not necessary anymore.

@quotschmacher said in Blacklisting of Plugins:

and while doing this, i copied the device from vincentriemer to the plugin from @thex

I think that’s not necessary as I pointed the commits in the two git repositories are identical! The differences you pointed are at the level of published package releases. The only thing which may have happened is that vincentriemer did some additional source code changes which he did not pushed to his fork. However, I doubt this is the case. Maybe you can clarify this.

@mwittig even tough I know there are some serious issues with the plugin pimatic-easybox it’s a pitty knowing that the plugin is one of the soon blacklisted devices. If the plugin wouldn’t be outdated it would be really beneficial for easybox users. And yes, I know these are pretty less.

@fabian Agree, it is a pity. If any @developer is willing to take a stab at this I am happy to donate an easybox router which I have in my cupboard. It is an older model but it should be ok as a starting point.