https://developer.blender.org/source/blender-extensions-platform/
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This is very welcome.
As an (unfortunate) captive to the After Effects ecosystem I’ve come to appreciate an AE Scripts program that scans and automates updates for their plugins and scripts, of which I have an ungodly collection.
Anything that can ease transitions from version to version with artist’s day-to-day tools–and keep us current–is greatly appreciated.
If you are Gumroad or BlenderMarket I suggest you also pay attention. Whoever tackles this issue first (and best) for commercial add-ons will gain a big advantage vs the competetion.
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I hope that they’ll avoid a star rating system like Unity Asset Store has because it’ll become quickly a completely mess.
Many Unity Asset devs complain that often the stars assigned by user are just an emotive reply to a malfuntion due to don’t read the manual or any other useful information.
In this way, filtering assets by stars become just meaningless.
Anyway, I think it’s great to have this platform
Since commercialization on this platform is strictly forbidden, I don’t see it as a competitor to BlenderMarket. I highly doubt most commercial add-ons will migrate over- HardsOps and BoxCutter bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from BlenderMarket, that company isn’t just going to cut their profits to 0 for the sake of auto updates
I’m sorry for my lack of clarity. I meant to convey that Gumroad would have an advantage over BlenderMarket (or reverse) if either party were to design and deploy an auto-updater. So aside from the non-profit one that Blender is building, a commercial market-place can have their own.
Here is the one that the AEScripts marketplace has built. It’s very nifty. It scans existing scripts and plugins, references purchases and makes updates a breeze.
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Oh I see. My bad, I misunderstood you. In that case, I completely agree - there’s a lot of potential for a similar commercial offering 
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I’m pretty sure that’s being worked on (or is at least an idea) by the Blender Market team, I saw something about it in their slack server…
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From Devtalk…
Extensions Platform - Alpha launch
Extensions Platform 
It is time … the Extensions Platform project is ready for initial public testing and feedback.
Keep in mind that this is a test instance. We may roll out some changes prior to the final official launch that may impact the existent data. So for now treat it as if all the data from the site may disappear.
How to test it
From Blender:
- Download a recent daily build of Blender 4.2 Apha .
- Enable the experimental feature : Prototypes → Extensions.
- In the User Preferences, Extensions tab, click on the
⚙and on+to add a new Remote Repository:https://extensions.blender.org.
Now you can Get any of the available extensions.
From the Website:
- Visit extensions.blender.org to discover, rate, get extensions.
- Login with your Blender-ID account to upload your extensions.
How to create extensions
This is more thoroughly explained in the documentation, but basically you will need a .zip file with your extension (e.g, an add-on) and a manifest file. This file will contain all the meta-data relative to this extension (replacing the need to add this in “bl_info”).
Blender has a few utilities that can be help you validating the manifest file and packaging your files. Check the documentation for the command-line options.
Documentation
Original blog post:
Feedback
We are looking for feedback on the different areas of the project:
- [CREATION]: How is the experience of creating extensions.
- [BLENDER]: How is the process in Blender to get extensions, change their settings, …
- [SITE]: How is the navigation on the site, the authoring process, …
- [OTHER]: Anything else (within the scope of this project).
You are also welcome to share your feedback on blender chat or report bugs directly on the site bug tracker.
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We don’t have enough developers. Entire modules have been abandoned for years. Bugs are piling up. Dev fund had a big hit because a few corpos left. Let’s make a completely new module and associated website that will require constant maintenance and money to pay for storage.
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i gotta say, bf management always surprises me
In other news, 25% sale at Blender Market through Feb 25th.
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On the other hand, addons in Blender are a mess and always have been. Addons are scattered throughout multiple paid stores, github and this forum. Updating is a mess. Finding things is a mess. I currently have a spreadsheet where I keep the extensions I use, their link, and once in a while I go there and check if there has been any update. For themes it is even worse, they are all scattered everywhere, out of date and whatnot.
This unifies the mess and provides a centralized free store and an API for external ones, plus the ability of managing this with a simple JSON if one wants to self-publish.
Think of desktop browsers: extensions have always been their strength. Blender’s ecosystem of addons is without any doubt, in my opinion, one of the biggest advantages it has over the competiton. Investing on that is intelligent.
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And they will continue to be.
The Extension Platform has not eliminated all the other sources for addons, and it never will. It’s just provided ANOTHER source to download an addon, and although it will tell you if your currently installed version isn’t the latest one they have - it won’t know if it’s the latest that actually exists.
-
Jenny wrote an addon, she keeps it on github. Tomorrow she uploads v1.5 to Bextensions, and you install it. Next week she updates it to v1.6, uploads it, and you get an alert to update it. In May, she updates it on github to 1.7, and never uploads it to Bextensions because “why bother with this extra step.” Jenny can be on v4.8 by next year, and you’ll still have the old code that doesn’t work anymore, and possibly have the impression that Jenny left the code for dead.
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No commercial plugins on Bextensions. So you still have to go to BlenderMarket and Gumroad, just like you do now.
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Jenny’s friend Akim also codes addons, keeps them on Github. He never even bothered to upload to Bextensions in the first place. So if you’re using Akim’s addon that you found at some point - you still have to go to github to get his updates.
This didn’t unify anything.
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No, the API addresses this issue. Read the docs
Jenny can create a JSON file and put it in her github repo together with the extension. When a new version is released and uploaded on github, the only thing Jenny has to do is updating the JSON file. All the users of the extension get the update automatically. Even without going through the store, the API they provide allows such cases to be managed. You can avoid the store completely and still benefit from this.
Regarding commercial plugins: yeah, indeed. That is unavoidable. Similarly, if Akim does not bother even to create the JSON file, well, we are screwed. But it is very easy to create it, it can be easily automated. It’s better than what we have now.
But having most of my opensource addons in a single, high quality store, or having to install an addon by just pasting a URL in Blender and having it update automatically at every new release… that’s not bad.
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Let’s hope Jenny bothers to do that.
From the docs:
Example of what the JSON is expected to look like:
{"blender_kitsu": {
"id": "1",
"name": "Blender Kitsu",
"tagline": "Pipeline management for projects collaboration",
"version": "0.1.5-alpha+f52258de",
"type": "add-on",
"archive_size": 856650,
"archive_hash": "sha256:3d2972a6f6482e3c502273434ca53eec0c5ab3dae628b55c101c95a4bc4e15b2",
"archive_url": "http://extensions.blender.org/media/files/ed/ed656b177b01999e6fcd0e37c34ced471ef88c89db578f337e40958553dca5d2.zip",
"blender_version_min": "4.2.0",
"maintainer": "Blender Studio",
"tags": ["Pipeline"],
"license": ["SPDX:GPL-3.0-or-later"],
"website": "http://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/blender-kitsu/",
"schema_version": "1.0.0"
}}
So Jenny has to provide this bit in the JSON:
ID: 1
What is “1”? The version number?
archive_hash: sha256:3d2972a6f6482e3c502273434ca53eec0c5ab3dae628b55c101c95a4bc4e15b2
Where does that hash # come from?
archive_url: http://extensions.blender.org/media/files/ed/ed656b177b01999e6fcd0e37c34ced471ef88c89db578f337e40958553dca5d2.zip
Ok, that looks like the URL for the addon AT the Extensions website. Does Jenny instead use her github address?
I’m sure the above have answers, but those answers aren’t in the manual…
And again, solving the documentation on the above does nothing to unify the addon source pool - unless every single developer on github does it, and they won’t.
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If she bothered to create an addon and publish it, I have hope. And the developers who will bother will most likely upload their creations on the store too, creating a nice, high quality collection of addons. We have similar examples for other software: Firefox addons, or F-Droid on Android. They’re great and they work like this.
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True, but there are also more paid developers than ever before: https://fund.blender.org/grants/. This list is not even complete. There are like 30+, almost all of them full-time.
Sculpting, UVs and the VSE have always had less contributors yea… But hey, there is a sculpt dev hired now and aras_p is breathing new life into the VSE 
That’s unfortunately true. It needs to get better. The metrics are a bit deceiving though because rules on e.g. high prioity bugs changed.
Renewals ran out so they had to resubscribe. The dev fund is pretty much at where it was before.
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If you think this is actually going to stick around and provide a central source for add-ons, I have some bad news for you about:
- Layer-based painting in Blender
- Layered textures and texture nodes
- Blender Network
- The Blender certified trainer program
And I might have a bridge to sell you, too
There is a difference, though: this is a platform and API. Once established, the ball will be in the hands of the addon developers, so to say.
But yeah, we shall see.
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