PIPELIGHT(1)

📦
version 0.2.8.2 · 2 versions
, in nixos 26.05

💅 PIPELIGHT — the pipelight-plugin girlies' field guide 🎀

ok so first things first: this is the manual page for pipelight-plugin, the commandline bestie that ships with Pipelight — part of the Pipelight 0.2.8.2 situation. she's giving "vintage but iconic", and honestly she ate. let's get into it 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

Pipelight — use Windows plugins in Linux browsers (based on Wine). that's it, that's the vibe. 🍷

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pipelight-plugin [OPTIONS ...] COMMAND

for the full list of possible options and commands, lowkey just scroll down to the OPTIONS/COMMANDS section of this man page. it's all there, i promise 🫶

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so. Pipelight is a special browser plugin that lets you use Windows-only plugins inside Linux browsers. like, your Linux browser is out here living its life and Pipelight is the main character translator making the Windows plugin moment happen ✨

currently supported plugins: Silverlight, Flash, Shockwave, the Unity3D Webplayer, and some more (the full roster is in the PLUGINS section, keep reading bestie 💜).

the commandline utility pipelight-plugin is what lets you enable/disable plugins and update the plugin database. iconic behavior, no notes 👑

👑 OPTIONS/COMMANDS 👑

🎀 Options:

  • -y, --accept — doesn't ask you for license confirmation, just enables plugins directly. perfect for automating the whole "yes i accept the license agreement" moment so you don't have to sit there clicking things like it's 2014. ngl it kind of is 2014. 😭

🧚 User commands:

  • --enable PLUGIN — enables the specified plugin for the current user (by creating a symlink in $HOME/.mozilla/plugins). and here's the plot twist: when you run this command as root, the plugin gets enabled system-wide instead, by creating a symlink in the mozilla plugins directory (often located at /nix/store/hivkkc45jq0z60mbs9qn5rfwmkxk5i7l-pipelight-0.2.8.2/lib/mozilla/plugins). for the full plugin list see the PLUGINS section in this man page, bestie 🫶
  • --disable PLUGIN — disables the specified plugin for the current user, or disables the system-wide symlink when executed as root. ⚠️ real talk: a plugin may still stay active if it was enabled both system-wide and for the current user before. so like, check both, don't come for me 🙈
  • --disable-all — disables all enabled plugins. for more deets see --disable. it's giving "clean slate" energy ✨
  • --list-enabled — returns a list of all plugins enabled for the current user. the result contains one plugin per line so external scripts can parse it without drama. slay for automation 💅
  • --list-enabled-all — returns a list containing both the plugins enabled for the current user and the system-wide enabled plugins, all together. if a plugin is enabled multiple times, it also appears multiple times in the list. yes, duplicates. that's the point. periodt. 🔥
  • --system-check — performs some system checks to make sure wine and all required components are installed correctly. a warning doesn't necessarily mean something's wrong, but if you're hitting a problem it's genuinely useful to attach this to your bug report. do it. help the devs help you 🧚
  • --help — shows a short version of this help. the tl;dr of the tl;dr.
  • --version — shows the current version of Pipelight. 🎀

⭐ Global commands (require root rights):

  • --create-mozilla-plugins — ok so, to make it possible to use multiple Windows plugins with Pipelight at the same time, you need multiple copies of libpipelight.so installed. this command is typically used in Pipelight's own installation process to create all the necessary copies. on a first execution it only creates the libraries for the standard plugins; on all future executions it additionally updates all unlocked additional plugins. growth mindset honestly 🌈
  • --remove-mozilla-plugins — removes all the copies of libpipelight.so. typically used during uninstallation (but not for updating! read that again bestie 🫶). all unlocked plugins are locked again afterwards. 🔒
  • --unlock PLUGIN — to save some disk space, the default Pipelight install only creates copies of libpipelight.so for the most commonly used plugins. this command unlocks an additional plugin by creating another copy of libpipelight.so. afterwards you can --enable it like any other standard plugin. it's giving VIP access 💅
  • --lock PLUGIN — removes the copy of libpipelight.so for a specific plugin. ⚠️ this command can only be used for additional plugins, not for the standard plugins. no take-backs on the OGs 💀
  • --update — establishes a connection to the Pipelight upstream repository and downloads the latest version of the plugin database (called dependency-installer) containing the plugin URLs and checksums. the main purpose is updating plugins between the official Pipelight releases. the signature of the downloaded file is checked to prevent corruption or modification. security girlie behavior, obsessed 🔥

💜 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 💜

you can export the following environment variables to modify the behaviour of pipelight-plugin. yes, you, personally. 🫵

  • MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH — create the plugin symlinks in the provided path instead of $HOME/.mozilla/plugins. use this env var to keep your Pipelight plugins separate from your other browser plugins. lowkey the cleanest setup, ngl ✨

🦋 PLUGINS 🦋

Pipelight currently supports the following browser plugins:

🍓 Standard plugins

silverlight5.1, silverlight5.0, silverlight4, flash, unity3d, widevine

🧚 Additional plugins (experimental or not often used):

shockwave, foxitpdf, grandstream, adobereader, hikvision, npactivex, roblox

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

here are some typical examples of how to use pipelight-plugin. screenshot these, they're useful 📸

$ sudo pipelight-plugin --update

downloads the latest version of the plugin database. if there was a new update, it will be installed on the next browser restart or when the plugin is reloaded the next time. no cap, that's the whole flow 🔄

$ sudo pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight --enable unity3d

enables multiple plugins system-wide — in this example Silverlight and the Unity3D Webplayer. two birds, one command 🐦

$ MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=$HOME/myplugins pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight
$ MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=$HOME/myplugins/ google-chrome --user-data-dir=$HOME/.config/chrome-pipelight

ok so the first line enables Silverlight in the self-defined plugin directory $HOME/myplugins. then Google-Chrome is started with the same environment variable so it can actually detect the Silverlight plugin. and here's the clever part bestie: all other browsers will not have Silverlight enabled, because they don't search for plugins in the custom plugin directory. selective availability, main character energy 👑

🎀 FILES 🎀

  • /nix/store/hivkkc45jq0z60mbs9qn5rfwmkxk5i7l-pipelight-0.2.8.2/bin/pipelight-plugin — commandline utility to enable/disable plugins and update the plugin database.
  • /nix/store/hivkkc45jq0z60mbs9qn5rfwmkxk5i7l-pipelight-0.2.8.2/lib/pipelight/libpipelight*.so — the shared library libpipelight.so plus additional copies for all unlocked and standard plugins.
  • /nix/store/hivkkc45jq0z60mbs9qn5rfwmkxk5i7l-pipelight-0.2.8.2/share/pipelight/licenses/* — license information for supported plugins. read 'em, bestie 📜
  • /nix/store/hivkkc45jq0z60mbs9qn5rfwmkxk5i7l-pipelight-0.2.8.2/share/pipelight/configs/* — configuration files containing, for example, which dependencies are required for a specific plugin, and where Pipelight can find the plugin DLLs. normally there should be no need to edit them manually! hands off 💅
  • /nix/store/hivkkc45jq0z60mbs9qn5rfwmkxk5i7l-pipelight-0.2.8.2/share/pipelight/scripts/* — helper scripts for specific plugins, for example to enable/disable GPU acceleration.
  • /nix/store/hivkkc45jq0z60mbs9qn5rfwmkxk5i7l-pipelight-0.2.8.2/share/pipelight/* — directory containing other files used internally by Pipelight.
  • /nix/store/hivkkc45jq0z60mbs9qn5rfwmkxk5i7l-pipelight-0.2.8.2/lib/mozilla/plugins/libpipelight-*.so — symlinks to all enabled system-wide plugins.
  • $HOME/.mozilla/plugins/libpipelight-*.so — symlinks to all enabled user-specific plugins.

Pipelight can be distributed under the terms of the MPL-1.1 or GPL-2.0 or LGPL-2.1 license. pick your fighter ✨

⚠️ please note that most of the plugins also have their own end-user license agreement. take a look there or ask the developers if you want to redistribute Pipelight with third-party plugins included. don't just vibe your way into a licensing problem, bestie 🫶

🔥 BUGS 🔥

bugs can be reported on the Pipelight Launchpad project page.

⚠️ real talk: Pipelight uses a patched wine version, so don't report Wine-related bugs at the official Wine bug tracker. instead report them at the Pipelight project page too — unless you can reproduce them with an unpatched version of Wine. then and only then is it a Wine problem 🙈

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

  • Pipelight Launchpad project page
  • Installation instructions
  • #pipelight on IRC freenode

ok that's the whole page, you're officially educated 💖 version 0.2.8.2, dated February 2014 — she's a vintage icon and she's still serving. go forth and enable some plugins, bestie. mwah 🎀💅✨

📦 where this page comes from