Zotero 7: Should reloading a plugin work without restarting Zotero

[maie...@gmail.com]

Hi,

the documentation states that it should be possible to reload a plugin in Zotero 7 without restarting Zotero. I've tried to just disable and re-enable the plugin in the plugins dialog. I've found that it seems to work at times, but not consistently. Am I missing something? Are there some settings to make this work?

Best,

Denis

[XY Wong]

Not sure what you mean by saying `not consistently`. Theoretically, if it cannot reliably be reloaded, then it should be some bugs with the plugin itself, not Zotero. If you need help with your plugin reloading issue, we'll need to see the code.

[maie...@gmail.com]

What I mean is this:

I've set up the development environment as described here: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/plugin_development#setting_up_a_plugin_development_environment

Now, in Zotero 7 the plugin gets loaded when I start Zotero (it complains about the missing -purgecaches option though.)

When I go to the plugins manager, I can disable the plugin.

If I reload the plugin, it will still use the old code even if I've changed the code. I have the impression that it picks up some changes, like changes to the .flt localisation, but that's about it. Real code changes will only be picked up after restarting Zotero.

Is that the correct behaviour or does that indicates there's a bug in the plugin code?

[Dan Stillman]

On 6/17/24 4:40 AM, maie...@gmail.com wrote:
> When I go to the plugins manager, I can disable the plugin.
> If I reload the plugin, it will still use the old code even if I've
> changed the code. I have the impression that it picks up some changes,
> like changes to the .flt localisation, but that's about it. Real code
> changes will only be picked up after restarting Zotero.
>
> Is that the correct behaviour or does that indicates there's a bug in
> the plugin code?

That's correct behavior. It's possible we could make it invalidate some
cache when a plugin is simply disabled, but that's not something we've
ever promised.