What package do I need to install to develop plugins for gedit?

Solution 1:

I get the same error as you if I run the plugin code directly without Gedit.

As it is described in the manual you linked, you need to make a .plugin file for your plugin code. Place your plugin code and the .plugin file into ~/.local/share/gedit/plugins. Restart Gedit. Open Gedit > Edit > Preferences > Plugins and look for your plugin. Set the checkmark for your plugin. Your plugin shoud run now using the Gedit code.

To check for errors in your plugin, start gedit from a console.

Solution 2:

To answer your question, the typelib you need for developing gedit plugins is contained in the gedit package itself.

$ apt-file search Gedit-3.0.typelib
gedit: /usr/lib/gedit/girepository-1.0/Gedit-3.0.typelib

But when using python either interactively or from a script, from gi.repository import Gedit searches /usr/lib/girepository-1.0/ rather than /usr/lib/gedit/girepository-1.0. That is the cause of the import error.

You'll need to create the appropriate .plugin and .py files in ~/.local/share/gedit/plugins and run your code by selecting the plugin in the gedit preferences dialog.

Solution 3:

An import error for Gedit may indicate that GtkSource-3.0.typelib is missing or not installed correctly.

Typical symptoms are in addition that you can't load several plugins (not only the one you develop yourself), and that you get warnings when starting gedit from the command line (seen on Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy). You can fix this by installing the missing package:

sudo apt-get install gir1.2-gtksource-3.0

See also: Warnings while launching gedit from the Ubuntu terminal

Also note that the plugins for GEdit v3 use python3 instead of version 2.7.x of Python.