I am, confident it can. Looking at the fields in use in a large collection of plugins I see the following already in use “dependencies, requires and dependents”.
However we need not change the core if we adopt my suggestion here because the user could include the details in a readme eg $:/plugins/tiddlywiki/internals/readme or /dependencies etc…
- This would allow a full wikitext and script to be used and include dependacies that are not even plugins eg Node implementation only, latest version available here, manual or user instructions, configurations settings etc…
An Import process improvement?
At a minimum we need a fieldname in plugins that lists the plugin tiddler name such as $:/plugins/tiddlywiki/internals $:/plugins/tiddlywiki/browser-sniff and then the plugin display can test for their existence.
- The issue from there if you don’t have the plugin how do you find it?
An approach now possible, but may not be backwardly compatible is to allow the plugin tiddler to have a field added by the name of the plugin tiddler eg;
$:/plugins/tiddlywiki/internals which can then be given a note or additional wikitext such as
$:/plugins/tiddlywiki/internals="Core plugin - Internals"
or
$:/plugins/kookma/shiraz="Shiraz is Found in [[Kookma Plugin Library|https://plugins.tiddlyhost.com/#%24%3A%2Fconfig%2FKookmaPluginLibrary]]
- Warning I experienced some performance issues with that link, opening plugins.
It is less complex if each required plugin once installed identifies its own dependencies.
- If you have a complex package which has a complex set of dependencies you can encode this in a tiddler within the original plugin