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manifest / updates / chips-plugin-manager

CHIPS Plugin Manager self-updates

Installs and updates CHIPS utility plugins on client WordPress sites from their public GitHub repositories

by CHIPS · github.com/danielshields/chips-plugin-manager

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Install

No release zip yet. The repository archive installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow:

wp plugin install https://github.com/danielshields/chips-plugin-manager/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

Ships its own WordPress updater (built-in updater), so new versions show up under Dashboard → Updates.

Readme github.com/danielshields/chips-plugin-manager ↗

Installs and updates the CHIPS WordPress utility plugins on client sites, straight from their public GitHub repositories.

Once it's active, the plugins it manages behave like any other plugin: updates show up on Plugins, on Dashboard → Updates, and in wp plugin update. The dedicated screen at Plugins → CHIPS Plugins adds install/activate buttons and a manual "check GitHub now".

Adding a plugin

Edit plugins.json in this repo and commit to main. Client sites re-read it within six hours — no need to update this plugin on each site.

{
  "slug": "chips-wp_rte-input",
  "repo": "danielshields/chips-wp_rte-input",
  "main_file": "chips-rte-input.php",
  "branch": "main",
  "name": "CHIPS – Text Input with Format",
  "description": "…",
  "icon": "icon-256x256.png",
  "requires_plugins": ["advanced-custom-fields-pro"]
}
Field Required Notes
repo yes owner/name. Must be public.
slug no The folder the plugin installs into. Defaults to the repo name. Set this when a site already has the plugin under a different folder name — changing it later orphans the existing install.
main_file no Primary PHP file inside that folder. Defaults to {repo-name}.php. Set it whenever the file isn't named after the repo — chips-wp_rte-input holds chips-rte-input.php, not chips-wp_rte-input.php.
branch no Defaults to main.
icon no Path in the repo to an image, shown on the updates screen.
requires_plugins no Folder names of plugins that should be active. Shown as a note; not enforced.

Getting slug or main_file wrong is the main way this goes sideways: the plugin's identity to WordPress is {slug}/{main_file}, and if that doesn't match what's on the site, the update lands as a second plugin instead.

How updating works

Versions come from the Version: header of main_file on the tracked branch, read over raw.githubusercontent.com (no API rate limit, ~8 KB per check via a Range request). Anything higher than the installed version is offered as an update; the download is the branch archive.

Every push to main that bumps the version header becomes an update offer on every client site, within the six-hour cache. There's no staging step, so treat a version bump as the publish action — commit freely, bump deliberately.

Results are cached for six hours (30 minutes after a failed lookup). The "Check GitHub for updates" button clears all of it.

Two things it handles that a naive updater doesn't

  • Folder renaming. A GitHub archive unpacks to {repo}-{branch}, e.g. chips-wp_rte-input-main. Installed as-is, WordPress treats that as a different plugin from chips-wp_rte-input — you get a duplicate and the original stays at the old version. upgrader_source_selection renames the unpacked folder to the declared slug first. The CHIPS Plugins screen also flags stray -main folders left behind by a previous updater.
  • Filter ordering. ACF and WP Migrate DB Pro both rebuild the site_transient_update_plugins object at the default priority, discarding entries added before them. Updates are injected at PHP_INT_MAX so they survive.

Updates use bulk_upgrade() rather than upgrade(), because the single-plugin path deactivates the plugin before upgrading and never turns it back on.

Requirements and limits

  • Public repositories only — no token is stored on client sites.
  • Tested on single-site WordPress. Multisite isn't tested; the version cache index uses update_option, which is per-site.
  • Version comparison is version_compare(), so headers should be numeric and increasing. 1.00 works but 1.0.0 is friendlier.

Overriding per site

// Track a branch on one site only.
add_filter( 'chips_pm_manifest', function ( $plugins ) {
    if ( isset( $plugins['chips-duplicator'] ) ) {
        $plugins['chips-duplicator']['branch'] = 'staging';
    }
    return $plugins;
} );

// Point at a different manifest entirely.
add_filter( 'chips_pm_manifest_url', fn() => 'https://example.com/plugins.json' );

Local development

./sync-to-sandbox.sh copies this plugin into ~/Websites/afam-sandbox (real files, not a symlink, so self-update behaves as it will in production).