Difference between user/addons and user/third_party?

I found, following line in legacy/libraries/Core.php

define('PATH_THIRD',  SYSPATH . 'user/addons/');

So third_party folder is not used at all?!?

Module documentation says

Modules should be placed into the third_party folder in a package and be named after that package name. At a minimum, there are 4 required files for any module:

    third_party/module_name/upd.module_name.php - installs, uninstalls and updates the module
    third_party/module_name/mcp.module_name.php - the backend control panel
    third_party/module_name/mod.module_name.php - the core module file, which process module tags used in templates
    third_party/module_name/language/english/module_name_lang.php - holds all language variables, allowing multiple language versions of the module

It depends of the EE version,

EE2: ./system/expressionengine/third_party/

EE3: ./system/user/addons/

Maybe the documentation is not up-to-date, I didn’t check…

The third_party folder is no longer being used in version 3, which uses addons instead. It looks like we missed a few references in the documentation, which I’ve fixed. Sorry for the confusion!

Seth, on this page, https://docs.expressionengine.com/latest/development/plugins.html, under “Control Panel Information”, the “usage() function” seems also outdated. The “addons.setup.php” should be used instead, if I’m right…

Ingo,

You are correct. We need to update that section of the documentation.

Sorry, for late answer. Yes, it’s version 3… Thanks.

I’ve spend way too much time getting my plugins to work in EE3. The documentation is outdated and should mention that the addon.setup.php is required.

Also, the documentation mentions the BASEPATH constant check which won’t work when using a namespace as is needed with the new anatomy of a plugin.

Hopefully the documentation gets updated soon.

documentation … should mention that the addon.setup.php is required.

It does, actually: https://docs.expressionengine.com/latest/development/conversion/

I see, however, when looking into the docs of developing a plugin itself it says to put the plugin information into static variables in the class itself.

So I did eventually figured it out but in my opinion it is very confusing, especially since the docs do describe the anatomy of a plugin which has no mention of the addon.setup.php file.

I think it would be very helpful to have that mentioned to prevent any confusions.