There are three ways to add a Che-Theia plug-in into the Che-Theia IDE:

  • Using the Che-Theia dashboard

  • By configuring a workspace

  • At runtime

Adding a plug-in through the dashboard

  1. Navigate to the Workspaces tab in the dashboard.

  2. Select the workspace to which you want to add the plug-in.

  3. In Workspace > <workspace-name> window, click the Plugins tab, and select the required plug-ins.

    adding plug ins in dashboard
    Figure 1. Adding plug-ins through the dashboard

Adding a plug-in by configuring a workspace

This method is useful when you need to add plug-ins from a non-default registry.

  1. Navigate to the Workspaces tab in the dashboard.

  2. Select the workspace to which you want to add the plug-in.

  3. Switch to the Config tab, and find the attributes.plugins section.

    adding plug ins in workspace configuration
    Figure 2. Adding plug-ins by configuring a workspace

    Plug-ins are separated by commas (,).

  4. To add plug-ins, append new records after the separator. A record has the following format:

     <registry-base-uri>/plugins/<plugin-name>:<version>

    Examples:

    • https://custom-registry/plugins/org.name.plugin.theia:1.0.0

    • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/username/che-custom-plugins/master/plugins/org.name.plugin.theia:0.0.1

Adding a plug-in at runtime

This method adds a plug-in to an already running workspace. The plug-in is not added permanently; it is removed when the workspace stops. This is a good method to test a plug-in without affecting the permanent workspace configuration.

  1. Run the Deploy Plugin by Id command, and specify the ID of the plug-in that you want to add to the workspace. A plug-in ID can be:

    • A local directory with plug-ins. All the plug-in binaries (.theia files) in the specified directory would be loaded. Example: local-dir:///home/theia/plugins/.

    • VS Code extension link. To obtain the link, go to the VS Code marketplace, find the needed extension, copy its ID, and append the ID to the vscode:extension/ prefix.

      For example, for the XML language server plug-in, it is: vscode:extension/redhat.vscode-xml.

    • Link to plug-in binaries (.theia files). Can be both HTTP and HTTPS. Example: https://domain.net/path/plugin.theia.

To check if the plug-in loaded successful, open the Plugins panel (View > Plugins in the main menu) and search for the plug-in in the list.