AiiDA plugin registry improved

[Jusong Yu]

Dear AiiDA community,

Thanks to great work by our Google Summer of Code student, Ahmed Basem, we have recently released some major improvements to the AiiDA plugin registry:

• Documentation: The registry now automatically extracts documentation about the functionality provided by plugins through the entry point mechanism and makes it available on the detail page of each plugin (example).

• Search: You can search this information directly from the registry home page. Give it a try next time you are looking for a “plugin that does x”.

• Quality Assurance: A daily workflow checks whether plugins install successfully alongside the latest AiiDA version. Those that do, get a green checkmark. 

• By default, the list of plugins is now sorted by the latest release, so plugins that are under active development automatically bubble up to the top.

Feedback is very welcome at the new AiiDA discourse group.

Happy computing!

Jusong Yu and Leopold Talirz,

On behalf of the AiiDA team

A message to plugin developers:

We kindly ask you to have a look at the plugin registry and the detail page of your plugin(s) to check whether the information shown is as you expect. We encourage you to make use of the new automatic documentation feature [1] - it will help new users find your plugin. 

The plugin detail page now also contains a section “Registry checks” that lists issues discovered while parsing information about your plugin and installing it inside the latest aiida-core container. If you feel any of the information displayed on the registry is incorrect, please open a pull request or reach out directly, 

Thank you for your contribution to the AiiDA community, we’d love to hear your thoughts!

[1] Automatic documentation of entry points is currently supported only for Processes (CalcJobs, WorkChains, etc.); support for Data classes may come in the future.