Unable to install Theia Plugins

[vitaliy-guliy]

Description

It looks after merging the PR installing of Theia Plugins become impossible. All Theia plugins configured in workspace config are handled as VS Code extensions and downloaded in /plugins directory with wrong extension.

Screenshot below displays logs of plugin broker while installing the plugins

A plugin eclipse-che/tree-view-sample-plugin/0.0.1 is a Theia plugin temporary stored on github in https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vitaliy-guliy/che-theia-plugin-registry/master/plugins/eclipse-che/tree-view-sample-plugin/0.0.1/meta.yaml

I opened terminal for theia-ide container and listed /plugins directory

Blocks #12905

Reproduction Steps

• Install che-omnisharp-plugin plugin got from plugin registry by adding redhat-developer/che-omnisharp-plugin/0.0.1 to workspace configuration

• install custom tree-view-sample-plugin plugin built from che-theia-samples by adding https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vitaliy-guliy/che-theia-plugin-registry/master/plugins/eclipse-che/tree-view-sample-plugin/0.0.1 to workspace configuratoin

OS and version:

Diagnostics:

[davidfestal]

@vitaliy-guliy could explain how it blocks #12905 ?

Is the problem only that without a .theia extension the Theia IDE doesn't take the extension in account ?
Or is the problem only that the log lines don't differentiate between Theia plugins and VsCode plugins ?

[vitaliy-guliy]

@davidfestal I'm able to continue working on #12905 but I cannot test how installed Theia plugin works. I add/remove plugins to/from attributes in workspace config and need to restart workspace to apply changes.
When restarting a workspace I see the wrong output informing me that my Theia plugin is VS Code extension. But it's not a problem.
The problem is Theia plugin is downloaded in /plugins directory with wrong extension and is not deployed by Theia.

You can reproduce the problem by adding a Theia plugin to workspace config.

[vitaliy-guliy]

@davidfestal Cold you check this meta.yaml for Theia plugin.

apiVersion: v2
publisher: eclipse-che
name: tree-view-sample-plugin
version: 0.0.1
type: Theia plugin
displayName: Tree View Sample Plugin
title: Tree View Plugin example for Theia
description: Tree View backend plugin example for Theia.
icon: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vitaliy-guliy/che-theia-plugin-registry/master/icons/tree.png
repository: https://github.com/eclipse/che-theia-samples/tree/master/samples/hello-world-frontend-plugin
category: Samples
firstPublicationDate: "2019-03-13"
latestUpdateDate: "2019-04-09"
spec:
  extensions:
    - https://github.com/vitaliy-guliy/che-theia-plugin-registry/releases/download/0.0.1/tree_view_sample_plugin.theia

I suppose Theia plugin has to be configured somehow differently, not by spec/extension

[amisevsk]

@vitaliy-guliy No, that's the current configuration, something was lost in that PR when we merged it (theia plugins are processed identically to VS Code plugins). Everything works if we preserve file extensions (giving theia plugins .theia extensions) AFIACT and I'm working on a PR to fix this (should be done today).

I think the original idea was that both Theia and VS Code plugins can include .theia and .vsix files in the extensions field (since we don't really need to do much differently between cases.

[vitaliy-guliy]

I have just tested the plugin broker with David image

 - name: CHE_WORKSPACE_PLUGIN__BROKER_UNIFIED_IMAGE
   value: 'quay.io/dfestal/che-unified-plugin-broker:fix-rhche-1354'
 - name: CHE_WORKSPACE_PLUGIN__BROKER_INIT_IMAGE
   value: 'quay.io/dfestal/che-init-plugin-broker:fix-rhche-1354'

It works pretty fine for me. But I payed attention on the downloaded file name

Could we somehow make it shorter or name the file in format ${publisher}.${name}.${version}.theia ?

[davidfestal]

Could we somehow make it shorter or name the file in format ${publisher}.${name}.${version}.theia ?

Well, the final part of the name, is filename of the extension downloaded by the URL.
Since there can be several extensions downloaded for one plugin, having a name that gathers both the plugin reference and the extension reference seems useful, no ?

[vitaliy-guliy]

@davidfestal it's not critical for me. Let it be as you wrote.

[makandre]

Has this been fixed? I still appear to encounter it. What builds of which components do I need to have the fix?

[johnmcollier]

@vitaliy-guliy @davidfestal
I'm still seeing this issue too, as @makandre says.

When loading a workplace with a Theia extension (using a devfile), the loading shows the following:

Starting Init Plugin Broker
Cleaning /plugins dir
Unified Che Plugin Broker
List of plugins and editors to install
- eclipse/che-machine-exec-plugin/0.0.1 - Che Plug-in with che-machine-exec service to provide creation terminal or tasks for Eclipse CHE workspace machines.
- john/my-plugin/0.0.1 - Enables iterative development and deployment in Che
- IBM/my-theia-plugin/0.0.1 - Tree View backend plugin example for Theia.
- eclipse/che-theia/next - Eclipse Theia, get the latest release each day.

Starting Che plugins and editor processing
Starting VS Code and Theia plugins processing
Downloading VS Code extension for plugin 'plugins/my-theia-plugin/0.0.1'
All plugins have been successfully processed

The line Downloading VS Code extension for plugin 'plugins/my-theia-plugin/0.0.1' shows, and the plugin doesn't show up in the list of installed plugins in Theia

I should also note that the workaround here: #13349 (comment) does work for me.

[makandre]

... now magically it started to work :) I guess some backend processes finally kicked in?

I do still see Downloading VS Code extension for plugin 'my-theia-plugin tho.

On the fs, the filename looks like <my-theia-plugin>.<version>.<random-chars>.<my_theia_plugin>.theia

[amisevsk]

@makandre Yes, the "magically" part is the versioning for the plugin broker.

On Che, you are likely using plugin broker v0.17, which automatically takes bugfix releases -- I just released v0.17.2 including David's fix (which was merged a bit ago but I forgot to make a release out of it).

The reason the filename in the filesystem is strange is mostly to avoid name collisions -- it shouldn't interfere with functionality. The reasoning behind it is that a single plugin could define multiple extensions, so the naming scheme is required. The reason you're seeing <my_theia_plugin> twice is because for theia plugins we try to append the original filename (to keep the extension).