Plugins

Currently we have various ExternalModules that enable customization of Candlepin’s behavior. The primary downside to this approach is that any jar that provides these classes must actually be laid down over the exploded war, which makes installation difficult. Below, a plugin scheme is outlined to alleviate this.

  • Establish a known directory to put all plugin jars.
  • The plugin container scans jars in this folder, pulling in all contained classes.
  • It then looks for a commonly named Guice plugin class and overrides the candlepin modules with the plugin-provided module

This would allow for complete separation of the base candlepin codebase from any extension points. This would also allow for default provided implementations to be cherry picked for customization.

Open Questions

  • How do we handle multiple implementations that bind to the same interface?
  • Should we allow hooks for the plugin to set up any db tables it needs?
  • Should we only allow ServiceAdapter implementations, or permit plugins to define resources as well? (This would raise a host of follow-up questions)
Last modified on 1 March 2024