Child plugin

Yes it is possible, and there are already plugins that add functions to existing plugins. You could consider the various add-ons for Gravity Forms to be child plugins as they add functions to Gravity Forms and are of no use on their own.

I also developed my own private plugin which I use on client sites with Genesis Responsive slider. My add-on plugin adds a custom post type and unhooks the slider plugin’s stylesheet so I can enter custom styles myself.

you are right, as a concept I don’t think this is something that I’ve ever read an article about. Might be a good subject for a blog post?

cubecolour – Considering it’s not QUITE the same as a child theme (my index.php replaces parent theme’s index.php), a blog post explaining how you have to unhook and rehook, and order things properly would be a good idea.

It’s very similar to the drama of overriding a parent theme’s functions.php though. ??

Yes, I’d steer away from the term child plugin and would refer to this kind of plugin as an extension plugin.

I’ve started on a blog post – I don’t write enough of those, so thanks for the encouragement. It would be good to be able give examples of a real plugin, so I’ll probably polish up one of my extension plugins & release it.

Hey guys.

Just a comment, this has been discussed before, e.g. https://www.ads-software.com/ideas/topic/child-plugins

This plugin seems ti be helpful for the current work-around options: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/plugin-dependencies/