:date: 2019-03-18

======================
Monday, March 18, 2019
======================

In my yesterday's changes I didn't like the way :ref:`cosi` was expecting a
hoster to specify which VAT declaration plugin to install.  My quick solution
yesterday asked something like this in your local :xfile:`settings.py` file::

    def get_installed_plugins(self):
        yield super(Site, self).get_installed_plugins()
        yield 'lino_xl.lib.eevat'

    def setup_plugins(self):
        super(Site, self).setup_plugins()
        self.plugins.countries.configure(hide_region=False)
        self.plugins.ledger.configure(use_pcmn=True)
        self.plugins.countries.configure(country_code='EE')

Now it says::

    def get_plugin_configs(self):
        yield super(Site, self).get_plugin_configs()
        yield ('vat', 'declaration_plugins', 'lino_xl.lib.eevat')
        yield ('countries', 'hide_region', False)
        yield ('countries', 'country_code', 'EE')
        yield ('ledger', 'use_pcmn', True)



Until now it wasn't easy to make it that easy because
:meth:`lino.core.site.Site.setup_plugins` is being called long after
:meth:`lino.core.site.Site.get_installed_plugins`.  IOW it was not easy to say to
one plugin (vat) that it should load (or not) some other plugin depending on
the value of a configuration setting.

I had to improve the Lino API by adding two new methods
:meth:`lino.core.site.Site.get_plugin_configs` and
:meth:`lino.core.plugin.Plugin.get_required_plugins`.



TODO: Use configparser and allow for local config files to specify plugin
settings.