During development you don't want to have to recompile a PHAR file every time you make a little change to your code. Therefore, there are two additional ways that you can load plugins for easy code access.
This plugin format works out of the box, but it's not recommended for production use, and has less features than a normal plugin would. This format is useful if you want to quickly test some features but don't need a full-blown plugin.
See this thread to see how a script plugin looks and works.
- Drop the
.phpfile into yourpluginsfolder. - Restart the server and the plugin will be loaded.
This plugin format is similar to a PHAR plugin in structure, but all the files are in a folder on the disk instead of inside a phar file. This gives you easy access to the source code when you're developing a plugin.
This plugin format is most commonly used because it is just as feature-complete as a PHAR plugin, and can be converted to a PHAR plugin when you're ready to release it.
- If you don't have the
DevToolsplugin, download its phar file and put it in yourpluginsfolder.
- Move the folder containing the plugin's source code into your
pluginsfolder. The plugin's folder should contain aplugin.ymlfile and asrcfolder. - Restart the server and the plugin will be loaded.
No. This is not currently possible.
PocketMine-MP does not directly support loading zip plugins, but there may be third-party plugins available which allow you to do this. However, this is not recommended.