-SimGrid supports the use of plugins; currently, no known plugins
-can be activated but there are use-cases where you may want to write
-your own plugin (for instance, for logging).
-
-Plugins can for instance define own classes that inherit from
-existing classes (for instance, a class "CpuEnergy" inherits from
-"Cpu" to assess energy consumption).
-
-The plugin connects to the code by registering callbacks using
-``signal.connect(callback)`` (see file ``src/surf/plugins/energy.cpp`` for
-details).
+SimGrid plugins allow to extend the framework without changing its
+source code directly. Read the source code of the existing plugins to
+learn how to do so (in ``src/plugins``), and ask your questions to the
+usual channels (Stack Overflow, Mailing list, IRC). The basic idea is
+that plugins usually register callbacks to some signals of interest.
+If they need to store some information about a given object (Link, CPU
+or Actor), they do so through the use of a dedicated object extension.
+
+Some of the existing plugins can be activated from the command line,
+meaning that you can activate them from the command line without any
+modification to your simulation code. For example, you can activate
+the host energy plugin by adding the following to your command line: