Minecart

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Plugins & Resources ​

IMPORTANT

Minecart is currently in early development. Resource management is currently limited to Modrinth plugins on paper servers and will be expanded to additional server types, providers, and resource types (such as mods and datapacks) in the future.

For Paper servers, Minecart can resolve, download, and update plugins alongside the server jar. Declare plugins under resources.plugins in minecart.yml:

yaml
server:
  type: paper
  version: latest
  eula: true

resources:
  sync: false
  plugins:
    - name: luckperms
      provider: modrinth
    - name: viaversion
      provider: modrinth
      version: 5.2.1
      channel: beta

resources is the top-level block for external server add-ons, with plugins as the first supported resource type.

Plugin options ​

Each entry in resources.plugins supports the following fields:

  • name (required) — The project slug on Modrinth (for example, https://modrinth.com/plugin/luckperms uses luckperms).
  • provider (required) — The upstream source. Currently, only modrinth is supported.
  • version (optional) — A specific version number to pin (e.g. "5.2.1"). Omit this field or set it to latest to automatically resolve the newest version compatible with your server's Minecraft version and the paper loader.
  • channel (optional, default stable) — The minimum stability threshold used when resolving latest:
    • stable — Accepts release versions only.
    • beta — Accepts release and beta versions.
    • alpha — Accepts release, beta, and alpha versions.

Updates and sync behavior ​

Plugins are installed into <directory>/plugins/ and tracked in the .manifest file inside the server directory:

  • On startup, if a declared plugin is already recorded in .manifest at the resolved version and its jar file passes checksum verification, Minecart skips downloading it.
  • When a plugin updates to a new version, Minecart downloads the new jar, updates .manifest, and removes the previous jar file.

Removing undeclared plugins (sync) ​

The resources.sync option controls what happens when you remove a plugin from minecart.yml:

  • sync: false (default): Previously installed plugins are left in <directory>/plugins/.
  • sync: true: Any plugin tracked in .manifest that is no longer declared in minecart.yml is removed from <directory>/plugins/ and .manifest. Unmanaged files that you placed in plugins/ manually are never deleted.

Server type support

Plugins are only installed when server.type is paper. Declaring resources.plugins on any other server type logs a warning and skips plugin installation.