Development Guide

This plugin directory now follows a more standard Obsidian plugin source-repo layout while still remaining directly loadable by Obsidian.

Directory Map

zotero-citations/
├── assets/screenshots/       # README images
├── docs/                     # Project docs
├── src/                      # TypeScript source
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── README_EN.md
├── RELEASE_NOTES.md
├── esbuild.config.mjs
├── manifest.json
├── package.json
├── package-lock.json
├── styles.css                # Runtime stylesheet loaded by Obsidian
├── tsconfig.json
├── version-bump.mjs
├── versions.json
└── main.js                   # Generated build output used locally by Obsidian (kept untracked in Git)

Local Workflow

npm install
npm run check
npm run build

After rebuilding, reload the plugin in Obsidian:

obsidian plugin:reload id=zotero-citations

Important Local-Plugin Nuance

This folder is both:

a source repository layout, and
the live plugin directory under .obsidian/plugins/

So main.js must continue to exist locally for Obsidian to load the plugin, even though .gitignore excludes it from the GitHub source repository.

Likewise, data.json is local runtime state and should stay untracked. In contrast, styles.css is a real plugin asset and should stay versioned.

Release Metadata

manifest.json stores the plugin version and minimum Obsidian version.
versions.json maps each released plugin version to its minimum compatible Obsidian version.
npm version <patch|minor|major> can use version-bump.mjs to keep manifest.json and versions.json in sync.

Suggested Release Checklist

Run npm run check
Run npm run build
Update CHANGELOG.md
Bump the version with npm version ...
Confirm manifest.json and versions.json were updated
Attach main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css to the GitHub release if distributing release artifacts

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