This plugin was created for Octopress by Jason Woodward to make it possible to manage order of the sidebar partials from the _config.yml.
This is mostly useful for those working on an Octopress theme.
Jekyll allows you to include partials from the /source/_includes directory as follows:
{% raw %}{% include partial.html %}{% endraw %}
This will embed the contents of /source/_includes/partial.html in place of the snippet above.
First add an array pointing to a list of partials underneath /source/_includes
asides: [asides/about.html, asides/social.html]
Now from within a template you can render the partials from the yaml array like this.
{% raw %}{% include_array asides %}{% endraw %}
Octopress uses include_array to allow configuration of different sidebars for each layout.