Plugins¶

AiiDA plug-ins are input generators and output parsers, enabling the integration of codes into AiiDA calculations and workflows.

The plug-ins are not meant to completely automatize the calculation of physical properties. An underlying knowledge of how each code works, which flags it requires, etc. is still required. A total automatization, if desired, has to be implemented at the level of a workflow.

Plugins live in different repositories than AiiDA. You can find a list of existing plugins on the AiiDA website or on the aiida-registry (check the JSON version or the human-readable version), the official location to register and list plugins.

Installing plugins¶

The plugins available for AiiDA are listed on the AiiDA homepage

For a plugin aiida-diff hosted on PyPI, simply do:

pip install aiida-diff
reentry scan -r aiida   # notify aiida of new entry points

In case there is no PyPI package available, you can install the plugin directly from a source code repository, e.g.:

git clone https://github.com/aiidateam/aiida-diff
pip install aiida-diff
reentry scan -r aiida

Note: Instead of updating the reentry cache via reentry scan -r aiida, the same can be achieved from python:

from reentry import manager
manager.scan(group_re='aiida')

Background¶

What does pip install aiida-diff do?

resolves and installs the dependencies on other python packages as specified in setup.py
creates a folder aiida_diff.egg-info/ with metadata about the package
if the -e option is given, creates a symbolic link from the python package search path to the aiida-diff directory and puts the .egg-info folder there. Changes to the source code will be picked up by python without reinstalling, but changes to the metadata in setup.json will not.

For further details, see the Python packaging user guide.