Plugin Creator Guide on Spinnaker

Backend Service Extension Points

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Project Setup

To enable plugins for a service, you only need to do two things:

Add implementation("com.netflix.spinnaker.kork:kork-plugins") to your {service}-core module.
Add @Import(PluginsAutoConfiguration::class) on your Main class or somewhere that will always be loaded.

Once the plugin framework is installed, you must create an API module to home your service extension points.

API Module

Plugins are all about the API. Ensure your project has a {service}-api module (called “the API module” from now on). The API module MUST NOT have other project module dependencies: Your {service}-core module (called the “core service module”) will actually depend on the API module, as it is the core’s and other modules’ responsibility to marshal between internal data structures and objects and the external API contracts.

Frontend Plugin Development

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Overview of Frontend plugins

Frontend plugins provide a way to change the behavior of Deck, Spinnaker’s UI service. You can add configuration and validation for new stages provided by Orca plugins, override existing components with your own implementation, or add new Kubernetes kind definitions for custom resources in your environment. Spinnaker loads plugins at runtime through Gate.

You can write plugins in any JavaScript-compatible language, but the development tooling is designed for JavaScript and TypeScript.

Plugin Compatibility Testing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A plugin can be executed inside of a Spinnaker version that is different than the version it was compiled against. For example, a plugin compiled against Spinnaker 1.20 might be compatible with Spinnaker versions up to 1.23.

This range is important for plugin developers so that they can support users across Spinnaker versions; it’s important for plugin consumers so that they can safely install and upgrade plugins. Fortunately, testing can resolve this compatibility range automatically.

Plugin Project Configuration

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Plugins are an evolving feature. The easiest way to set up a new plugin project is to copy one of the spinnaker-plugin-examples projects that most closely resembles what you want to do.

Gradle configuration

Some important aspects of your project’s gradle build:

gradle.properties

Organizing these values into gradle.properties is optional, but these versions are very much mandatory.

spinnakerGradleVersion=8.10.1
pf4jVersion=3.2.0
korkVersion=7.99.1
orcaVersion=2.19.0-20210209140018
kotlinVersion=1.3.50

Note that managing the version of your plugin here (version=1.2.3) requires modifying this file for each release. There are fancier ways (the example project uses a git tag strategy and additional gradle plugins) but those are outside the scope of this documentation.

Test a Pipeline Stage Plugin

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This document is deprecated and out of date. Halyard is no longer supported but the document is being left as a useful reference

This guide explains how to set up a local Spinnaker environment on your Mac or Windows environment so you can test the pf4jStagePlugin, which has both Orca and Deck components. Spinnaker services running locally communicate with the other Spinnaker services running in a local VM. Although this guide is specific to the pf4jStagePlugin, you can adapt its contents to test your own plugin.