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Docs: Add guidance on depending on a plugin for local development

Open sympatheticmoose opened this issue 1 year ago • 1 comments

Which areas does this feature request relate to

  • [ ] Create Plugin
  • [ ] Sign Plugin
  • [ ] Plugin E2E
  • [ ] Plugin Meta Extractor
  • [X] Documentation

Problem

There is no documentation for creating a plugin which depends on an already existing plugin

Solution

We should explain the following about how create plugin's development env works:

  • the plugin’s dist folder (built plugin) is linked to /var/lib/grafana/plugins/{{ pluginId }}
  • once grafana server boots it runs a plugin loader Load function which scans this folder for plugins and initializes them (runs them)
  • this path has no dependency verification although other plugin.json validation, manifest and signatures checks are happening

So in order to install the plugin with it’s dependency you would need to either add the dependency into GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=dependency (which devs probably are doing) or build and install your whole plugin via grafana cli or GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=your-plugin-zip-via-url (which is quite inconvenient, but would work)

Alternatives

No response

Additional context

No response

Are you interested in contributing the solution?

  • [ ] Yes
  • [ ] No

sympatheticmoose avatar Jun 11 '24 09:06 sympatheticmoose