Every developer has different plugins locally in:

<SERVOY_HOME>\application_server\plugins

This leads to:

• "works on my machine" / "doesn't work on yours"
• hard-to-reproduce bugs
• tedious onboarding

A central "Gold" plugin baseline lives on a share and is synchronised locally and automatically:

• Managed: team plugins (from the manifest) are installed / updated / removed
• Unmanaged: private / unreleased plugins remain untouched
• Sync errors must warn informatively but still launch Servoy

The share contains one set of plugins + manifest per Servoy version:

K:\SERVOY_GOLD\
└── plugins\
    └── servoy-2025.12.1.4123\
        ├── manifest.json
        └── files\
            ├── myplugin.jar
            └── subfolder\
                └── another.jar

Note: V1 uses a versioned folder structure so that updates remain controlled. A current\ symlink can be added later.

• plugins_sync.py reads the config, manifest, and synchronises.
• Servoy is launched via a wrapper script (start-servoy.cmd on Windows, start-servoy.sh on macOS / Linux).

• Managed plugins = all files listed in manifest.json
• Unmanaged plugins = everything in the local plugins folder that is not in the manifest

For each managed plugin from the manifest:

For local plugins that were previously managed but are no longer in the manifest: → move to quarantine (never hard-delete)

Removed managed plugins are moved to:

<SERVOY_HOME>\application_server\plugins__quarantine\YYYY-MM-DD\

This allows rollback if the manifest was wrong. Old quarantine folders can be cleaned up with clean_quarantine.py.

Private / unreleased plugins may exist locally and are never removed or modified.

manifest.json contains:

Minimal example:

{
  "servoy_version": "2025.12.1.4123",
  "generated_at": "2026-03-02",
  "files": [
    { "path": "myplugin.jar", "sha256": "…", "size": 12345 },
    { "path": "subfolder/another.jar", "sha256": "…", "size": 999 }
  ]
}

Identity check is done via sha256. size is used as a fast pre-check to avoid unnecessary hashing.

Because every developer installs Servoy in a different location, a local config file is required per user. It is never committed to Git.

Default location:

• Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.servoy-plugin-sync.json
• macOS / Linux: ~/.servoy-plugin-sync.json

Example:

{
  "gold_root":      "K:\\SERVOY_GOLD\\",
  "servoy_home":    "C:\\servoys\\2025.12.1.4123\\",
  "servoy_version": "2025.12.1.4123",
  "mode":           "quarantine"
}

The fastest way to create this file is the interactive wizard:

python plugins_sync.py --init-config

Eclipse / Servoy's servoy.ini / eclipse.ini is not designed to reliably run external scripts at startup. A wrapper script is the clean solution:

1. Run python plugins_sync.py
2. On error: show warning
3. Always launch Servoy (servoy.exe / Servoy.app) regardless

1. Create the folder structure on the share:

   K:\SERVOY_GOLD\plugins\servoy-<VERSION>\files\
   

2. Copy all intended team plugins into files\.
3. Generate the manifest:

   python build_manifest.py --files-dir "K:\...\files" --out "K:\...\manifest.json" --servoy-version "2025.12.1.4123"

4. Optional: create a CHANGELOG.md on the share for change tracking.

1. Create local config (--init-config or manually).
2. Use start-servoy.cmd (Windows) or start-servoy.sh (macOS / Linux) instead of launching Servoy directly.

For every plugin change:

1. Update plugin files in files\.
2. Regenerate the manifest with build_manifest.py.
3. Optional: update CHANGELOG.md (what changed and why).
4. All developers receive the new state automatically on their next launch.

• Optional HTTP server instead of SMB (only the transport changes, sync logic stays the same)
• current\ symlink on the share for the latest version
• Webhook notification when the Gold Maintainer publishes a new manifest