Desarrollando Plugins de Discourse - Parte 4 - Configuración de git

[Discourse]

Tutorial anterior: Developing Discourse Plugins - Part 3 - Add custom site settings

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Ahora que su complemento se está volviendo más sofisticado, es hora de ser más sofisticado sobre cómo lo desarrolla.

Sugerimos que utilice git como control de versiones para su complemento. También le recomendamos que utilice github para compartir el código de su complemento con otros.

Creación de su repositorio Git

Una vez que haya creado su cuenta de Github, visite esta URL para crear un nuevo repositorio. Puede llamarlo como quiera, pero generalmente algo que comience con discourse- es bueno. Asegúrese de que el repositorio sea público. Así es como se veía mi pantalla:

Creación de su carpeta de trabajo local

En este punto, creo un directorio local en mi computadora para albergar el complemento. Normalmente pongo el mío en ~/code, pero puede ponerlo en cualquier lugar que desee en su computadora:

mkdir -p ~/code/discourse-plugin-test
cd ~/code/discourse-plugin-test

Ahora sigamos las instrucciones de github para inicializar el repositorio con un README:

echo "# discourse-plugin-test" >> README.md
git init
git add README.md
git commit -m "first commit"
git remote add origin git@github.com:eviltrout/discourse-plugin-test.git
git push -u origin master

Finalmente, cree un archivo plugin.rb para su complemento como se explica en la parte 1. Para este ejemplo, simplemente creé uno ficticio:

plugin.rb

# name: discourse-plugin-test
# about: Muestra cómo configurar Git
# version: 0.0.1
# authors: Robin Ward

Creación de un enlace simbólico

Debido a que siguió nuestra guía para desarrolladores, debería tener una copia de discourse extraída en su computadora en algún lugar. Yo extraje la mía en ~/code/discourse, pero de nuevo, podría haberla puesto en cualquier lugar y esto aún debería funcionar si ajusta el siguiente código en consecuencia:

cd ~/code/discourse/plugins
ln -s ~/code/discourse-plugin-test .

El código anterior creó un enlace simbólico entre su código de discourse y la carpeta de su complemento. ¡Reinicie su servidor de desarrollo y debería encontrar que su complemento está funcionando!

La belleza de esta configuración es que puede simplemente registrar su complemento en github y no preocuparse por la base de código de discourse en la que reside. Sus cambios se aislarán al complemento en sí. Si necesita editar el código de discourse, aún puede hacerlo, ¡pero git rastreará los cambios por separado!

Recomiendo usar una ventana de editor para la base de código de su complemento y otra para Discourse en sí. Es más fácil cuando se piensa en ellos como dos cosas diferentes.

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Más en la serie

Parte 1: Conceptos básicos de complementos
Parte 2: Salidas de complementos
Parte 3: Configuración del sitio
Parte 4: Este tema
Parte 5: Interfaces de administrador
Parte 6: Pruebas de aceptación
Parte 7: Publique su complemento

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Este documento está controlado por versiones: sugiera cambios en github.

[AhmadF.Cheema]

• After many frustrating attempts, found out that apparently ln -s does not work in a Windows environment, or atleast not how it should.
• ln -s essentially just copy-pasted the plugin folder into the discourse/plugins folder
• Apparently, in Windows the way to create symbolic links is to use the mklink command in command prompt (run as administrator, and this command does not natively run in Windows PowerShell either).
• Using the mklink command (with both arguments /d and /h), although the created symbolic link could be seen present in the directory, the plugin was not working with discourse (and also not showing in /admin/plugins).
• I tried this multiple times with restarting the rails server, deleting the tmp folder, but to no avail.

@eviltrout, any idea what could I be doing wrong?

[eviltrout (Robin Ward)]

I assume you are using Vagrant on windows? If you can’t get the symbolic links sent over, I think the only way you can do it is to copy the plugin into discourse/plugins manually and work from there. It should work as long as you are not making changes to the core discourse app at the same time, which confuses git.

When your plugin is ready, you’ll want to copy it to another directory to package it up for git.

[AhmadF.Cheema]

Yeah, OK this should be fine too.
Although the OCD side of me, much preferred the comparatively “cleaner” symbolic links method.

Anyway, Thanks.

[pacharanero (Marcus Baw)]

@AhmadF.Cheema I had similar problems with the symlinking using Vagrant 1.9.8 on Linux, and a completely standard Discourse Vagrant development environment as per the docs.

The problem is simple when you look into it. From the scope of inside the Vagrant VM, the destination of the symlink is not a valid path. Try executing the command ls -al in the plugins directory inside your VM (in a standard install this is at /vagrant/plugins)

vagrant@discourse:/vagrant/plugins$ ls -al
total 36
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 4096 Oct 22 09:08 ./
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 4096 Oct 22 09:10 ../
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep  7 19:51 discourse-details/
drwxrwxr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 4096 Oct 21 13:56 discourse-narrative-bot/
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 4096 Oct 21 13:56 discourse-nginx-performance-report/
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 4096 Sep  7 19:51 discourse-plugin-outlet-locations/
drwxrwxr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 4096 Oct 21 13:56 discourse-presence/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vagrant vagrant   55 Oct 22 09:08 my-basic-plugin -> /home/marcus/code/discourse/my-basic-plugin
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 4096 Oct 21 13:56 lazyYT/
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 4096 Oct 21 13:56 poll/

As you can see, the path /home/marcus/code/discourse/my-basic-plugin cannot possibly be accessible from the VM because it doesn’t exist inside the VM!

The solution is to delete the externally created symlink and set up a separate shared folder in Vagrant, by adding a line to your Vagrantfile:

config.vm.synced_folder "/home/marcus/code/my-basic-plugin",  "/my-basic-plugin"

Then restart the Vagrant VM: vagrant halt && vagrant up so that this change is picked up

Now, when you enter your VM via SSH using vagrant ssh you can create a symlink inside the VM:

cd /vagrant/plugins
ln -s /my-basic-plugin .

Now you can develop in a neatly isolated local folder, and have the neat Git workflow that @eviltrout describes, and the symlinking happens inside the VM. Note that outside the VM, the symlink will be broken - but this shouldn’t matter for our purposes.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

If you are developing on Linux using our docker based dev is way simpler

[schungx (Stephen Chung)]

Windows symlinks are different from Unix symlinks, thus your confusion. Windows synlinks are very fussy, requiring particular versions of OS to support and sometimes applications must be written to be aware of this. In other words, the stars must line up perfectly for windows symlinks to work.

A hard link (/H) I dont think work with directories. Your /D makes a symlink on a directory, trumping your /H (which is used to create a hard link to a file, not a directory).

Confusing? Welcome to Windows.

There are four types of links in Windows:

• MKLINK (no flags) – symbolic link to file
• MKLINK /H – hard link to file
• MKLINK /D – symbolic link to directory
• MKLINK /J – junction (i.e. hard link) to directory

What you need is is a junction which is Windows-speak for hard link to a directory.

Do MKLINK /J to your plugins directory and the system will treat it as a subdirectory. In fact it won’t know otherwise. Beware, it is not common to have a Windows directory (folder in Windows-speak) to point to the same place as another directory, so you’ll get confused very easy and forget that both are the same things.

That’s why you’ll need to run the command in Administrator mode, otherwise Windows won’t let you create the directory junction.

[pacharanero (Marcus Baw)]

Thanks for the info regarding Windows symlinks @schungx - it should be of help to the OP.

The workaround I described should work fine on any platform, since the symlinks happen inside the (Ubuntu) vagrant box

M

[schungx (Stephen Chung)]

Yup, you’re right. If you can avoid it, avoid messing with Windows. Windows is very picky and may choose to die or go wrong at the most unfortunate moment…

[1c7 (Cheng Zheng)]

Work for me! 2018-4-29

1. I put discourse & my plugin in Desktop

instead of put 1c7-plugin under discourse/plugin

2. and put a “alias” into discourse/plugins folder

alias is a macOS concept,
it’s the same things as ln -s command

3. Discourse correctly load the plugin

(After reboot server with rails s)

4. Now they are separated, use git to manage code is much easier

Thanks!

[maaatt]

No puedo hacer que el symlink funcione en la configuración de Docker de macOS. Los plugins solo funcionan si se copian directamente en la carpeta de plugins.