Starting a new add-on with the AddOnAdmin tool

[Mimsy]

I was having some troubles getting started with my add-on, so I checked out this forum which said there should be an application in the tools folder in support called the AddOnAdmin tool. It's not there. I therefore can't get permissions to begin or save anything I write.

This is really frustrating. I checked every folder in the APIDevKit for the AddOnAdmin tool. It is nowhere to be found. I have a developer ID.

Am I missing something? Is there a step I skipped?

[poco2013]

I agree that for some reason the addon template was removed. However, there are several excellent documentations regarding addons in the developer site blog tab There are several example articles there.

AddOn Example 

[Mimsy]

I can see, in the blog and in the API documentation, how to go about writing an add-on with the Developer Kit - once you manage to get started. What I don't understand is that in the API documentation it says (paraphrased) "The suggested way to write an add-on is to use the examples provided rather than starting a project from scratch".

Do they mean alter the examples and save copies, which is an action that gets blocked when you try, or do they mean that you DO start a project from scratch, create header files and so on and then copy in the text from one of the examples before you begin altering it?

[poco2013 · Accepted solution]

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@Mimsy wrote:

Do they mean alter the examples and save copies, which is an action that gets blocked when you try, or do they mean that you DO start a project from scratch, create header files and so on and then copy in the text from one of the examples before you begin altering it?

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I don;t know what they mean and I don't think they know either. In practice, I found that neither approach works. Trying to alter a existing example is too confusing because the examples contain too much extraneous material and deleting all of it generally leads to deleting critical functions. Plus, for custom apps, one generally needs to "borrow" from more than one example.  Starting from scratch is too confusing and burdensome for me.

I found the best approach is to use the ADDON template which contains all the required functions and just adds a dialog and a user menu. This gets you started. You can later delete the dialog and/or menu or just ignore them.

i always start by adding  the utility files  of common.(c/h) (alter cmake to also complie c &h files as cpp %hpp are the default). You can also add in whole cpp & hpp files from the examples if that makes sense. I then use CMAKE (see cmake blog) to configure the vcxprog file for VS 2019. Works well. Then create multiple blank cpp/hpp files in the project in which to cut and paste procedures/function examples from the Developer Examples. Usually that is quicker and less confusing (for me at least).re-direct the menu provided as needed.

[Mimsy]

Thanks! That's really helpful. I'll get started.