Desarrollando plugins de Discourse - Parte 4 - Configurar git

[Discourse]

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

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Ahora que tu plugin está volviéndose más sofisticado, es momento de adoptar un enfoque más avanzado en su desarrollo.

Sugerimos que utilices git como sistema de control de versiones para tu plugin. También recomendamos que uses github para compartir el código de tu plugin con otros.

Creando tu repositorio Git

Una vez que hayas creado tu cuenta en GitHub, visita esta URL para crear un nuevo repositorio. Puedes llamarlo como quieras, pero generalmente es bueno que el nombre comience con discourse-. Asegúrate de que el repositorio sea público. Así es como se veía mi pantalla:

Creando tu carpeta de trabajo local

En este punto, creo un directorio local en mi computadora para almacenar el plugin. Por lo general, lo pongo en ~/code, pero puedes colocarlo donde quieras en tu 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 "primer commit"
git remote add origin git@github.com:eviltrout/discourse-plugin-test.git
git push -u origin main

Finalmente, crea un archivo plugin.rb para tu plugin como se explica en la parte 1. Para este ejemplo, simplemente creé uno de prueba:

plugin.rb

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

Creando un enlace simbólico

Como seguiste nuestra guía de desarrollo, deberías tener una copia de Discourse descargada en algún lugar de tu computadora. Yo la descargué en ~/code/discourse, pero nuevamente podrías haberla puesto en cualquier lugar y esto seguirá funcionando si ajustas el siguiente código en consecuencia:

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

El código anterior creó un enlace simbólico entre tu código de Discourse y tu carpeta de plugin. Reinicia tu servidor de desarrollo y deberías ver que tu plugin funciona.

La ventaja de esta configuración es que simplemente puedes subir tu plugin a GitHub sin preocuparte por la base de código de Discourse en la que reside. Tus cambios estarán aislados al propio plugin. Si necesitas editar el código de Discourse, aún puedes hacerlo, ¡pero Git rastreará los cambios por separado!

Recomiendo usar una ventana del editor para la base de código de tu plugin y otra para Discourse en sí. Es más fácil cuando los consideras como dos cosas diferentes.

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Más en la serie

Parte 1: Conceptos básicos de plugins
Parte 2: Puntos de inserción de plugins
Parte 3: Configuración del sitio
Parte 4: Este tema
Parte 5: Interfaces de administración
Parte 6: Pruebas de aceptación
Parte 7: Publica tu plugin

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Este documento tiene control de versiones: sugiere 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.