It is an application that helps RealStudio and Xojo plugin developers to package their products for Xojo/Real Studio in one of the two accepted formats:
- RBX (Virtual Volume based)
- xojo_plugin (zipped compressed)
The application allows you to create the required plugin folder hierarchy, modify its contents or populate it with libraries and resources and, finally, pack up all the stuff together in a plugin file in one of the following ways:
- from scratch
- from contents of an already existing plugin (either in RBX or xojo_plugin formats)
- from contents of a resource fork based plugin (available only for Carbon version of the application)
- from an existing folder hierarchy on disk
XojoPluginConverter is able to correctly resolve symbolic links, so that, at creation time, the real files, not the aliases, will be included into the packaged plugin.
The application has been entirely written in Xojo but the code has been tested without problems in RealStudio 2012r2.1 as well. It is available for MacOS X (both Carbon and Cocoa platforms), Windows and Linux Operating Systems.
The code is based onto that glorious, but aged, one provided by Real Software with their Plugin Converter utility. Anyway, it has been completely revised and, but this is just my opinion, improved.
The compression and decompression of data required by the Xojo plugin format, has been handled using the zip/unzip command–line utilities included in MacOS X Operating System while, in Windows OS, has been used the optimum command–line version of the 7–Zip open source software (it is included, along with its license and related documentation, in the project files stuff).
We routinely use this application to package all of ours Xojo/Real Studio plugins.
XojoPluginConverter and the associated source code is completely open source and it is distributed under the : you are free to modify and/or redistribute it as long as the terms of the license are adhered.