{"id":6297,"date":"2013-12-20T04:55:36","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T12:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/exoblog\/?p=6297"},"modified":"2013-12-20T04:55:36","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T12:55:36","slug":"boost-platform-new-add-ons-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/boost-platform-new-add-ons-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"Boost Your Platform with the New eXo Add-ons Manager"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ho, Ho, Ho, eXo Tribe!!!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it the season to give gifts to your beloved friends and family? I\u2019m not Santa Claus but I will give you a gift for Xmas, which I hope you\u2019ll enjoy.<\/p>\n

\"01-image07\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Platform 4.0 we introduced a basic extensions manager, the extension [sh|bat] script, which can be used to install and uninstall various extensions provided by your platform distribution (CRaSH, eXo IDE, …).<\/p>\n

At the end of November, while we were traveling with Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric<\/a> and Patrice<\/a> from France to our eXo office in Vietnam, we thought about how to improve this feature to ease the sharing of the many add-ons<\/a>, contributed by you, our community.<\/p>\n

After a few days of work, I developed a prototype, which I\u2019ve just released as version 1.0.0-alpha-2 (thanks to Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric<\/a> for the bug report<\/a> for version 1.0.0-alpha-1). There are still many things outstanding, but if you like it like us, you may see it in a future version of Platform.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a tour…<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Prerequisites<\/h2>\n

The add-on manager requires Platform 4+ and at the moment I\u2019m testing it with various combinations of environments from Platform 4.0.1 to the latest 4.1.0, which is in development:<\/p>\n

\"02-image06\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Installation<\/h2>\n

To install the add-on manager, just download it and extract the content of the archive into your Platform installation directory. This will add to the root two new scripts (addon.sh<\/span> and addon.bat<\/span>) and a new directory addons<\/span> containing a jar (addons-manager.jar<\/span>).<\/p>\n

To validate your installation, on Windows just launch the script addon.bat<\/span> or addon.sh<\/span> on other systems. Use the option –help<\/span> to display the help messages of the command line program.<\/p>\n

addon.sh --help<\/pre>\n
\"03-image03\"<\/a><\/p>\n
For this article, I\u2019ll use Platform 4.0.3 community edition on Mac OS (and so I\u2019ll use the addon.sh script).<\/p>\n
List available add-ons<\/h2>\n
The main goal of this new add-on manager is to make it easier to install add-ons into your platform. We will start by listing all of the available add-ons<\/p>\n
addon.sh --list<\/pre>\n
\"04-image01\"<\/a><\/p>\n
We have referenced various known extensions in an index and the program displays them. Using this form<\/a>, you can ask to Patrice<\/a> to reference a new add-on or a new version of an existing add-on.<\/p>\n
We also reference development versions (snapshots) of add-ons but we don\u2019t propose them by default as they may be unstable. To display them, just add the option –snapshots<\/span><\/p>\n
addon.sh --list --snapshots<\/pre>\n
\"05-image09\"<\/a><\/p>\n
 Install an add-on<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n
To install the latest released version of the awesome chat add-on<\/a>, for example, we just call:<\/p>\n
addon.sh --install exo-chat-extension<\/pre>\n
\"06-image04\"<\/a><\/p>\n
To install the latest version of an add-on including development versions we call:<\/p>\n
addon.sh --install exo-chat-extension --snapshots<\/pre>\n
\"07-image05\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Oh right ! By default, we don\u2019t want you to overwrite an existing version without a warning. Let\u2019s enforce it with the option –force<\/span><\/p>\n
addon.sh --install exo-chat-extension --snapshots --force<\/pre>\n
\"08-image08\"<\/a><\/p>\n
We just replaced version 0.8.0 by the development version 0.8.1-SNAPSHOT.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s now reinstall a specific version (0.8.0-beta1) using the syntax addonId:addonVersion<\/span><\/p>\n
addon.sh --install exo-chat-extension:0.8.0-beta1 --force<\/pre>\n
\"09-image10\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Uninstall an add-on<\/h2>\n
To uninstall an add-on we just call:<\/p>\n
addon.sh --uninstall exo-chat-extension<\/pre>\n
\"10-image02\"<\/a><\/p>\n
How can I reference my own add-ons?<\/h2>\n
While you are developing an add-on or if you just don\u2019t want to reference it in the global index, you can attach you own list of add-ons to the Platform.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s imagine I\u2019m working on the staging-extension<\/a> add-on, and I\u2019m deploying it in my local repository with Apache Maven.<\/p>\n
To install it using the add-on manager, I just have to create a file $PLATFORM_HOME\/addons\/list.json (NOTE 2014\/12\/02 : $PLATFORM_HOME\/addons\/local.json in add ons manager 1.0.0+)<\/span> with this minimal content:<\/p>\n
[\n {\n   \"id\": \"exo-staging-extension\",\n   \"version\": \"2.3.0-SNAPSHOT\",\n   \"name\": \"Staging Extension\",\n   \"description\": \"allows to stage your content before deploying it into production\",\n   \"downloadUrl\": \"file:\/\/..\/..\/.m2\/repository\/org\/exoplatform\/addons\/staging\/staging-extension-packaging-extension\/2.3.0-SNAPSHOT\/staging-extension-packaging-extension-2.3.0-SNAPSHOT.zip\",\n   \"vendor\": \"eXo platform\",\n   \"license\": \"LGPLv3\",\n   \"supportedDistributions\": [\"community\",\"enterprise\"],\n   \"supportedApplicationServers\": [\"tomcat\",\"jboss\"]\n }\n]\n<\/pre>\n
And then I can install it with:<\/p>\n
addon.sh --install exo-staging-extension:2.3.0-SNAPSHOT --force<\/pre>\n
\"11-image00\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Take care, because at the moment the download URL only supports a relative path from the add-on directory of your Platform installation.<\/p>\n
For now, an add-on archive is just a zip file with all the jar and war files required by your add-on. The script automatically copies them to wherever necessary.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next?<\/h2>\n
Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric<\/a> is trying to summarize all the requirements in a specification<\/a>. Don\u2019t hesitate to give us your feedback and to comment it. We are all ears.<\/p>\n
If you encounter any issues with the current version, don\u2019t hesitate to report them in the tracker<\/a>. If you want to contribute, don\u2019t hesitate to have a look at the code<\/a>. There is a README to explain how to build and test the project. I\u2019ll review with pleasure all pull requests<\/a>.<\/p>\n
I wish you a Merry Xmas!<\/p>\n
Arnaud<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ho, Ho, Ho, eXo Tribe!!! Isn\u2019t it the season to give gifts to your beloved friends and family? I\u2019m not Santa Claus but I will give you a gift for Xmas, which I hope you\u2019ll enjoy. In Platform 4.0 we introduced a basic extensions manager, the extension [sh|bat] script, which can be used to install […]","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[699],"tags":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":6297},"pll_sync_post":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exoplatform.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}