This section describes how to use a Che-Theia factory to share a plug-in in development environment with other users.

Sharing a factory with a plug-in development environment

This approach brings an advantage of other users being able to contribute to the development, provided they have write access to the repository with the plug-in.

  1. Create a factory with the plug-in development environment, and share it. The reviewers get the exact same environment. They must then build and run the plug-in to test it (a script or instructions on how to build should be included in the plug-in repository).

  2. The reviewer should start a hosted plug-in instance and specify the path to the plug-in project inside the workspace. For instructions on how to start a hosted instance of Che-Theia for plug-in testing, see [testing-che-theia-plug-ins_extending-che].

  3. To make the reviewers' work easier, it is possible to invoke a command to build the plug-in after the loading of the factory is completed. For more details, see the factory documentation.

Sharing a factory with plug-in configuration

This method provides a workspace with a ready-to-use plug-in. The author of the plug-in must host the plug-in binaries in a custom registry.

  1. Create a factory.

  2. Go to the factory details, and scroll to the Configuration section.

  3. Add the plug-in to the workspace.attributes.plugins field. The format is the same as described in [adding-a-che-theia-plug-in-into-a-workspace_publishing-che-theia-plug-ins].

    sharing plug in with factory

  4. Share the factory link.

Only accept factories from trusted sources. Malicious factories can potentially steal data that is accessible from within your workspace.
Additional resources