To install a module:
Copy of the module description file to a directory pointed to by the MAYA_MODULE_PATH environment variable
The MAYA_MODULE_PATH variable defines the search paths for Maya module files. You can add paths to it in the Maya.env file. See Setting up your build environment for information about Maya.env and see the entry for MAYA_MODULE_PATH in File path variables for the default module search paths.
To see what directories MAYA_MODULE_PATH points to, use the getenv command in the Maya Script Editor or Maya command line:
getenv MAYA_MODULE_PATH
Change the paths in the first line of the entries in the module description file to take into account the location of the module directory
When Maya starts up, it will read in the module description file for information about which version of the plug-in to use. It will then add the path to the appropriate icons directory to XBMLANGPATH, the path to the appropriate plug-ins directory to MAYA_PLUG_IN_PATH, the path to the appropriate presets directory to MAYA_PRESET_PATH, and the path to the appropriate scripts directory to MAYA_SCRIPT_PATH and PYTHONPATH.
The plug-in will now be available to be used by Maya.