ikiwiki/doc/plugins/contrib/transient.mdwn

*For discussion and the branch please see [[todo/transient pages]]. If this
plugin is merged, this page can be renamed to act as its documentation. --[[smcv]]*

[[!template id=plugin name=transient author="[[Simon_McVittie|smcv]]"]]
[[!tag type/special-purpose]]

The `transient` plugin adds an underlay in `.ikiwiki/transient`, which is
intended for pages that are automatically created and should not be committed
to the [[RCS]]. It works in the same way as the [[basewiki]] and the underlays
set up by the [[plugins/underlay]] plugin, so if a page in the transient
underlay is edited via the web, the edited version is committed to the RCS
as usual. Unlike other underlays, if a page in the transient underlay is
superseded by an edited version in the RCS, the old transient version
is deleted automatically.

This plugin is mostly useful as something that other plugins can depend on:

* [[plugins/contrib/album]] always writes photo-album "viewer" pages to the
  transient underlay

Likely future users of this plugin (the appropriate branches need to be
merged first):

* with a patch (which exists but hasn't yet been tested), [[plugins/aggregate]]
    always writes aggregated posts into the transient underlay
* with a patch, [[plugins/autoindex]] can be configured to auto-create missing
    pages that have a [[ikiwiki/subpage]] or an [[plugins/attachment]], but not
    commit them, in which case they go in the transient underlay
* [[plugins/comments]] can be configured to not commit comments: if so, it
    should probably put them in the transient underlay
* with a patch, [[plugins/recentchanges]] always writes new changes into the
    transient underlay
* with a patch, [[plugins/tag]] can be configured to auto-create missing
    tag pages but not commit them, in which case they go in the transient
    underlay