I like Gnome Builder, and I had the copious free time required to be the change I wanted to see in the world. So I looked into writing a Go plugin.

The minimum-viable plugin

A directory, in /home/hank/.local/share/gnome-builder/plugins/${plugin}, an empty python file, called ${plugin}.py, and a .plugin file, maybe ${plugin}.plugin. Maybe something like this:

[Plugin]
Name=Go Plugin
Module=go
Loader=python3
X-Project-File-Filter-Pattern=*.go
X-Project-File-Filter-Name=Go Project

This is enough of a skeleton to convince Gnome Builder that folders with Go files constitute a Go project, and will make it easier to navigate the ‘Open Project’ dialog.

Running builds

For this, we’ll fill out ${plugin}.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import gi
from gi.repository import Ide


class BobBuildPipelineAddin(Ide.Object, Ide.BuildPipelineAddin):
    def do_load(self, pipeline):
        context = pipeline.get_context()
        srcdir = pipeline.get_srcdir()

        # Register a BUILD action, which will get run when the user hits 'build'
        get_launcher = pipeline.create_launcher()
        get_launcher.set_cwd(srcdir)
        get_launcher.push_argv("go")
        get_launcher.push_argv("build")
        get_stage = Ide.BuildStageLauncher.new(context, get_launcher)
        self.track(pipeline.connect(Ide.BuildPhase.BUILD, 0, get_stage))

    def do_unload(self, application):
        pass

    def _query(self, stage, pipeline, cancellable):
        stage.set_completed(False)

And that’s it- click ‘build’ in Builder, and get a build.

There are a bunch of different build phases, I haven’t done much with them, although DOWNLOAD seems to map well to go get, INSTALL with go install, and go generate seems like it would map well to AUTOGEN. The Build Phase announcement is sort of tantalizing.

I pieced this together from the official docs, which are good, if incomplete. The upstream plugins are also a great resource.