Problems properly activating a plugin on ImHex

[exsilium]

Firstly, big thanks for all the effort that goes into creating and maintaining ImHex, it's an amazing editor and a well structured project! In hopes of trying to extend and contribute to the ecosystem I started to check out the existing plugins in the hopes to create my own. Doing so I ran into some issues. I hope someone can enlighten me.

I thought of writing my own custom provider, looking that there's a 3rd party plugin for Pcaps available, it seemed like a great resource on how to do that. Pcap plugin is based on the Plugin template so it should be quite standard way of creating the .hexplug.

Now to the issue at hand. The Pcap plugin works great if I compile it and use the imhex binary that gets produced along with it, but if I take the compiled .hexplug and drop that plug-in to another previously compiled instance of ImHex (same version), I see that the plugin gets initialised successfully (based on log manager output), but the actual Provider does not appear to the UI.

I added a log entry to where the Provider should be added to the list but it feels like this part of the code is never executed, if I just drop the .hexplug to another ImHex instance.

IMHEX_PLUGIN_SETUP("Pcap Provider", "Dragos", "Plugin for reading pcap files") {
    hex::ContentRegistry::Provider::add<PcapProvider>(true);
    hex::log::info("PcapProvider Added");
}

Am i missing something trivial here or advice how to debug this further.

TLDR; I'm having problems bringing plugins across to other ImHex instances, even if they are the same version.

[WerWolv]

Hey!

The logs should tell you if anything went wrong when loading your plugin. Could you post it here?
The main things that can go wrong are

• The plugin is in the wrong folder so ImHex doesn't see it
• The plugin depends on some external dlls that can't be found
• The plugin specifies a wrong supported version value causing ImHex to refuse to initialize it (and print an error message to the logs)

[exsilium]

Hi @WerWolv , and thank you for your quick reply. Adding some more info here:

From command line I can see also that the plugin is found:

117649-Despodent-Pyre build % ./imhex.app/Contents/MacOS/imhex --plugins                           
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'pcaps.hexplug'
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'fonts.hexpluglib'
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'ui.hexpluglib'
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'builtin.hexplug'
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'disassembler.hexplug'
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'decompress.hexplug'
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'hashes.hexplug'
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'visualizers.hexplug'
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'yara_rules.hexplug'
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'script_loader.hexplug'
[16:32:07] [INFO]  [libimhex | Main]           Loading plugin 'diffing.hexplug'
Loaded plugins:
- Pcap Provider by Dragos
  Plugin for reading pcap files
- Fonts by Unknown
  
- UI by Unknown
  
- Built-in by WerWolv
  Default ImHex functionality
- Disassembler by WerWolv
  Disassembler support
- Decompressing by WerWolv
  Support for decompressing data
- Hashes by WerWolv
  Hashing algorithms
- Visualizers by WerWolv
  Visualizers for the Pattern Language
- Yara Rules by WerWolv
  Support for matching Yara rules
- Script Loader by WerWolv
  Script Loader plugin
- Diffing by WerWolv
  Support for diffing data

One curious thing to add is also that, if I startup ImHex from command line, I can see the additional pcap log entry I added in the terminal, but not captured in the Log Manager. But still, it's not loaded to the effect that the plugin would be listed as one of the Providers:

117649-Despodent-Pyre build % ./imhex.app/Contents/MacOS/imhex                                     
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [main | Main]               Welcome to ImHex 1.32.2!
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [main | Main]               Compiled using commit master@09dd25d
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [main | Main]               Running on macOS 23.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 23.3.0: Wed Dec 20 21:30:44 PST 2023; root:xnu-10002.81.5~7/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000 (arm64)
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [main | Main]               Native scaling set to: 1.0
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [main | Main]               Using 'Apple' GPU
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [main | Init Tasks]         Task 'Setting up environment' finished successfully in 0 ms
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [main | Init Tasks]         Task 'Creating directories' finished successfully in 0 ms
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [main | Init Tasks]         Task 'Loading settings' finished successfully in 0 ms
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'pcaps.hexplug'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'fonts.hexpluglib'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'ui.hexpluglib'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'builtin.hexplug'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'disassembler.hexplug'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'decompress.hexplug'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'hashes.hexplug'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'visualizers.hexplug'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'yara_rules.hexplug'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'script_loader.hexplug'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Loading plugin 'diffing.hexplug'
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Library 'fonts.hexpluglib' initialized successfully
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Library 'ui.hexpluglib' initialized successfully
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [pcaps]      PcapProvider Added
[16:38:23] [INFO]  [libimhex | Init Tasks]     Plugin 'pcaps.hexplug' initialized successfully

In the instance where the plugin actually works, I can also see the PcapProvider Added log entry in the graphical Log manager view. 👀 ❔

[WerWolv]

The format of the log message looks really weird. Are you potentially linking your plugin to an old version of libimhex?
You should be using this template here: https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex-Plugin-Template

[exsilium]

Could be, thank you for your suggestion, I'll try with the updated template and retry