The most practical way to develop plugins is to use Node.js with the tiddlywiki5 repository to build your plugins, and to use GitHub to manage you files.

Step by step

1. Installation

First read https://tiddlywiki.com/static/PluginMechanism.html.

Install Git from http://git-scm.com/downloads

Install Node.js from http://nodejs.org/

2. Create a new blank repository on GitHub

Hint: GitHub repositories cannot be grouped together into directories, so it is only possible to group by using a naming scheme, e.g. use 'TW5-' as a name prefix with tiddlywiki5 projects to group them together.

Go to https://github.com/ and create new a repository 'pluginname' - choose to add a readme file.

3. Setup a working environment

Choose a location in your file system (eg TW5) for your plugin project; issue commands to:

1. Create the directory

mkdir TW5

2. Make a local read-only copy of the TiddlyWiki5 repository

git clone https://github.com/TiddlyWiki/TiddlyWiki5.git TW5

3. Make a directory for your plugin

cd TW5
cd plugins
mkdir yourname
cd yourname
mkdir pluginname

4. Make a local copy of your plugin repository

git clone https://github.com/yourgithub/pluginname.git pluginname

5. Go to your files

cd pluginname

Create the file plugin.info with content:

{
	"title": "$:/plugins/yourgithub/pluginname",
	"description": "summary of the plugin's purpose",
	"author": "yourname",
	"version": "0.0.1",
	"core-version": ">=5.0.8",
	"source": "https://github.com/yourgithub/pluginname",
	"plugin-type": "plugin"
}

4. Create the files for your plugin

For example files see the plugins in the TiddlyWiki5 repository i.e. those located at plugins/tiddlywiki/. See TiddlerFiles for details of the supported tiddler file formats.

5. Build your files into a TiddlyWiki

Modify editions/tw5.com/tiddlywiki.info to include a reference to your plugin directory, i.e. find "plugins": [ and add "yourname/pluginname".

From the TW5 directory issue the command

node ./tiddlywiki.js editions/tw5.com --build index

The resultant file (index.html) will be placed in the editions/tw5.com/output directory of the TW5 repo.

6. Save your work on GitHub

From plugins/yourname/pluginname/ issue commands to:

1. Add all files

git add -A

2. Commit to your local repository

git commit -am "something meaningful about this check in"

3. Copy local changes to github

git push