puter/doc/uncategorized/puter-mods.md

Puter Mods

What is a Puter Mod?

Currently, the definition of a Puter mod is:

A Module which is exported by a package directory which itself exists within a directory specified in the mod_directories array in config.json.

Enabling Puter Mods

Step 1: Update Configuration

First update the configuration (usually at ./volatile/config.json or /var/puter/config.json) to specify mod directories.

{
    "config_name": "example config",

    "mod_directories": [
        "{source}/mods/mods_enabled"
    ]

    // ... other config options
}

The first path you'll want to add is "{source}/mods/mods_enabled" which adds all the mods included in Puter's official repository. You don't need to change {source} unless your entry javascript file is in a different location than the default.

If you want to enable all the mods, you can change the path above to mods_available instead and skip step 2 below.

Step 2: Select Mods

To enable a Puter mod, create a symbolic link (AKA symlink) in mods/mods_enabled, pointing to a directory in mods/mods_available. This follows the same convention as managing sites/mods in Apache or Nginx servers.

For example to enable KDMOD (which you can read as "Kernel Dev" mod, or "the mod that GitHub user KernelDeimos created to help with testing") you would run this command:

ln -rs ./mods/mods_available/kdmod ./mods/mods_enabled/

This will create a symlink at ./mods/mods_enabled/kdmod pointing to the directory ./mods/mods_available/kdmod.

note: here are some helpful tips for the ln command:

• You can remember ln's first argument is the unaffected source file by remembering cp and mv are the same in this way.
• If you don't add -s you get a hard link. You will rarely find yourself needing to do that.
• The -r flag allows you to write both paths relative to the directory from which you are calling the command, which is sometimes more intuitive.