Plugins for Kicad and other programs

[phodina via <help-guix@gnu.org>]

Hi Guix,

Lots of programs now allow users to extend their features through plugins.
On non Guix distros where the user does not have the root priviledges they place
the the content of their plugin in the configuration directory in home directory.

Here's example for Kicad:
~/.kicad_plugins/
~/.kicad/scripting/
~/.kicad/scripting/plugins/

To further complicate things they can have their own plugin manager (e.g. Freecad).

In some cases they contain just some raw data or configs. However, large amount has
some code embedded like shell scripts, python which needs special handling on Guix.

Therefore my question is how to integrate them?

What I propose is with the merge of home services [2], there is now possibility to:

- create package defintion of the plugin
- create home service that will link the plugin into the correct location
within the home dir

There is also an alternative.
I searched the Kicad forum for plugin installation and installation into system dirs
(under /usr) is not recommended [2]. The plugin could be linked into the plugin
location under the /gnu/store/xxx-package. This could be done by inheriting kicad
package and adding the plugins to the input. That approach wouldn't be very flexible,
as it would create to many package combinations.

Also I never installed plugins into system directories on distibutions used before
Guix system so I don't know if it would work.

[1] commit 6ae4644984608b7eff7ab54d3a5787c661d85b2e
[2] https://forum.kicad.info/t/plugin-location-ubuntu-refresh-solved/24396