Che plug-ins are special services that extend Che workspace capabilities. Che plug-ins are packaged as containers. Packaging plug-ins into a container has the following benefits:

  • It isolates the plug-ins from the main IDE, thus limiting the resources that a plug-in has access to.

  • It uses the consolidated standard of container registries to publish and distribute plug-ins (as with any container image).

The containers that plug-ins are packaged into run as sidecars of the Che workspace editor and augment its capabilities.

Visual Studio Code extensions packaged in containers are Che plug-ins for the Che-Theia editor.

Multiple Che plug-ins can run in the same container (for better resource use), or a Che plug-in can run in its dedicated container (for better isolation).