Hiding a plug-in's source code

If you do not want other users to see the source code of your plug-in, you can supply the compiled version of the plug-in instead of supplying the source code version. When Abaqus/CAE imports the source code version of a plug-in, Abaqus/CAE first parses the plug-in and then compiles it into a executable version of the file (called filename.pyc) before it executes the file. If the source code has not changed since the last time the plug-in was compiled, Abaqus/CAE executes the compiled version directly and bypasses the compilation step. Abaqus/CAE will still import the plug-in if you delete the file containing its source code but retain the compiled version of the plug-in.

If you have only compiled versions of some plug-ins, you may want to store them in a directory under the abaqus_plugins directory. This will avoid confusion by keeping compiled versions of plug-ins that do not have source code separate from the compiled versions of plug-ins that still have the source code.