Building & Distributing¶

The ForkBit CLI packages your plugin into a .forkbit file (a ZIP archive) ready for installation.

Validate¶

Always validate before building:

forkbit plugin validate release_notes

The validator checks:

plugin.json structure and field types
Entry point file exists and has a BasePlugin subclass
All imports are covered by stdlib, forkbit_sdk, or declared requirements

Build for development¶

forkbit plugin build release_notes

This creates a .forkbit file for your current platform. Use this for local testing.

Build for release¶

forkbit plugin release release_notes

This builds for all supported platforms by downloading platform-specific wheels for each target:

macos_arm64 — Apple Silicon Macs
macos_x86_64 — Intel Macs
windows_x86_64 — Windows
linux_x86_64 — Linux

If your plugin has no native dependencies (only pure Python packages), a single universal build is created.

Platform exclusions¶

If your plugin doesn’t support a platform, exclude it in plugin.json:

{
  "exclude_platforms": ["windows_x86_64", "linux_x86_64"]
}

Source protection¶

To ship compiled .pyc files instead of source:

forkbit plugin release release_notes --protect

Dependencies¶

Add third-party packages to requirements in plugin.json:

{
  "requirements": ["requests>=2.28", "pyyaml"]
}

The build system automatically vendors dependencies into the .forkbit archive. Users don’t need to install anything — the plugin is self-contained.

Note

forkbit_sdk and PySide6 are provided by the app and should not be listed in requirements.

Installation¶

Users install plugins by opening the .forkbit file in ForkBit, or by placing it in the plugin cache at ~/.forkbit/plugin_cache/<plugin_id>/<version>/.