How to deploy a plugin in development

[JonasDoe]

Hey,

I'm just getting started with the whole plugin topic and I'm wondering what the most effective way is to run my plugin for testing. So two questions arose for me:

• How can I add the changes in my plugin to the etherpad? At the moment I'm always copying my whole plugin project folder into node_modules before running etherpad, but that seems rather inefficient. My first idea was to create a link (or symlink) from my project into the etherpad's node_modules folder, but neither of those are actually regarded (maybe because some kind of merging with src/node_modules takes place? n/c As I said, copying works).
• Is there some kind of hot-swapping to redeploy changes of my plugin without restarting the whole etherpad server and reload the website afterwards? I guess not, but there's nothing wrong with asking I guess. :)

Thanks it advance!

[webzwo0i]

You could give https://github.com/storytouch/ep_webpack a try as it does auto-updates afaik. Ensure maxAge in settings.json is 0.

Regarding node_modules: iirc use npm link in plugin's directory to make npm aware of your plugin (outside Etherpad's directory) and then you can simply npm link plugin-name

[JonasDoe]

Thanks for the quick responses so far! ep_webpack looks good, I'll try my luck with that one! Regarding the linking, it doesn't work out: Running the etherpad with the ep_print plugin linked in fails with Cannot find module 'ep_etherpad-lite/node/eejs/'.

[JohnMcLear]

For Server side changes a restart is required afaik, for client(html/css/js) it is not assuming minify is false and maxAge is 0

[JonasDoe]

I see, thank you!

[rhansen]

Here's what I do:

ETHERPAD_DIR=/path/to/etherpad-lite
PLUGIN_DIR=/path/to/ep_foo
(cd "$PLUGIN_DIR" && npm i)
ln -s "$ETHERPAD_DIR/src" "$PLUGIN_DIR/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite"
ln -s "$PLUGIN_DIR" "$ETHERPAD_DIR/node_modules"
(cd "$ETHERPAD_DIR/src" && npm i)
"$ETHERPAD_DIR/src/bin/fastRun.sh"

[JonasDoe]

Thanks for the script! For some reason, when testing it with ep_printit fails for me because there's a conflict between peer resolving with ep_etherpad-lite@undefined at the plugin folder and peer ep_etherpad-lite@">=1.8.6" from the root project. My guess was to create link from the the etherpad-lite/src named ep_etherpad_lite in ep_print/node_modules folder, but it did not help.

[rhansen]

peer ep_etherpad-lite@">=1.8.6" from the root project

Root project? Something funky is going on. Does package.json or package-lock.json exist in $ETHERPAD_DIR? If so, delete them.

[JonasDoe]

They don't exist, I've already learnt this lession when I first tried to install a plugin. :) That said, I only managed once to get this error again when retrying. Now most of the time the etherpad fails with

DEBUG] AbsolutePaths - /Users/xyz/etherpad/ep_print/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite does not end with "src"
[INFO] console - [2021-11-11 10:01:45.878] [ERROR] AbsolutePaths - Could not identity Etherpad base path in this darwin installation in "/Users/xyz/ep_print/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite"

, which is really odd because that's not the error I got the other day and I've no idea what I've actually changed since then. On the other hand, if the run script really relies on a folder named src, I can understand it won't like the alias' name. But anyway, your script is rather helpful to understand where symlinks are required, so I guess I can tinker a bit with that!

[rhansen]

Run Etherpad from $ETHERPAD_DIR, not from $PLUGIN_DIR/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite.

[JonasDoe]

Well, it's run from the last line of your script: "$ETHERPAD_DIR/src/bin/fastRun.sh"