How to use the Foswiki Extension Repository

Installing via configure

You can download and install extensions directly from your management page bin/configure!

Go to the section "Extensions" in configure and click the "Find More Extensions" botton. Here you will see a list of all extensions available for download and you can additionally see if you already have it installed - and which version. You can both install and upgrade from configure.

When installing via configure, the installers will also try to resolve any dependencies of other Foswiki extensions.

Manual Installation

It is also possible to manually install extensions. This may be required if you are behind a strict firewall where the server cannot see foswiki.org. You may also install manually if you want to be in control of what happens during the installation.

Extension packages are distributed with the same directory structure as Foswiki. You will always see the directories data and lib and for some extensions also one or more of the directories pub, templates, or tools.

To manually install an extension, simple copy the entire zip or tgz on top of the foswiki directories. And then enable the extension in configure.

If installing manually you will have to resolve any dependencies yourself.

More Information about installing Extensions

See System/InstallationGuidePart2 #Extensions.

Downloading extensions from both foswiki.org and twiki.org

Foswiki is able to run also most TWiki extensions.

Always check if a Foswiki extension is available first. A native Foswiki extension will always be the preferred choice as it will normally be more up to date and more stable as it does not have to rely on compatibility code.

Most useful extensions are ported to Foswiki now.

The following instructions is for the Foswiki admins that want to download extensions from both foswiki.org and twiki.org.

To use this extensions repository from configure in addition to the one on TWiki.org, you need to add it to the {ExtensionsRepositories} setting in configure (or lib/LocalSite.cfg)

How To:

1. Open configure (eg. http://yourdomain.com/foswiki/bin/configure)
2. In configure click the 'Yes, I've read all the documentation' button
3. Open the Extensions section
4. Replace the settings for ExtensionsRepositories with the following line:
   

   TWiki.org=(http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/,http://twiki.org/p/pub/Plugins/);Foswiki.org=(http://foswiki.org/Extensions/,http://foswiki.org/pub/Extensions/)

5. Save your settings - now you should be able to install from the Foswiki extension repository.

Note: The order of ExtensionsRepositories matters. For the same extension, the last repository has priority over the previous ones.