So, I'm taking a different view on plugins. limabean is exploring not supporting user-defined plugins at all! π±
The two you mention, auto_accounts and implicit_prices, are clearly important, so in limabean they are built-in. The plugin directive in the Beancount file is simply a switch to enable this functionality. I'm still to be persuaded that a full user defined plugin system is worthwhile, once a few key plugins have been implemented as built-ins (probably more than I have so far). For the record, here's how I do this: https://github.com/tesujimath/limabean/blob/main/rust%2Flimabean%2Fsrc%2Fbin%2Flimabean-pod%2Fplugins.rs#L6 I believe this approach makes sense in limabean because the user interface is a full-blown programming language, Clojure, and you can do whatever you need with the list of fully resolved directives that are exposed there after loading the beanfile. Plugins would justify their existence by a need to modify the transactions earlier, before the booking algorithm has run. Are there compelling use cases for this? Cheers, Simon On Fri, 27 Feb 2026, 11:02β―pm Justus Pendleton, <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wednesday, February 25, 2026 at 1:49:43β―PM UTC+10:30 [email protected] > wrote: > > Itβs currently not usable for me due to the surrounding ecosystem and > plugin support > > > I agree that the lack of plugin support is a problem for most users. Even > simple plugins like auto_accounts or implicit_prices are probably in pretty > wide usage. That said, most plugins are actually pretty simple and > straightforward and if someone got their alt-beancount to a stable-ish > point and wanted to facilitate wider adoption it would be pretty easy for > them to start porting popular plugins, especially now in the AI assisted > age. And could even make that an explicit thing "open a bug report for a > plugin you want converted to my alt-beancount and I'll do it for you so you > don't have to learn rust/lua/zig" > > For example, your own effective_date plugin is roughly 300 lines of > python. For someone who was actually competent in lua they could probably > port it in an hour or less. It would probably be a weekend's work to port > the top 20-30 plugins. In a different thread someone posted about > rustledger which seems to have taken that approach and claims to come > bundled with 20 plugins that have been ported to it. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Beancount" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/3a5e3f27-c846-439a-876b-57c7da0d308en%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/3a5e3f27-c846-439a-876b-57c7da0d308en%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CAFhGSbua2Z0%2BGg7DQ3_70%3DUvK66O5%3DyMfVzON%3D7k6XbAxeoiHQ%40mail.gmail.com.
