Plugins: Keep working when there is no internet access

[leventebalogh]

Related issues: #77905, https://github.com/grafana/support-escalations/issues/8305

What is the problem?

The "Add new connection" and "Plugins catalog" pages are not loading in case there is no internet access.

Why?

Although releasing #75272 made it possible to load these pages seamlessly in case the connection to GCOM times out, it didn't cater for any other network errors properly when fetching GCOM.

Solution

This PR is fixing the issue by not blocking the main UI flow in case the remote plugins are not available.

Testing

Tested the following flows manually:

• The "Plugins Catalog" and the "Add new connection" pages are still working if there is no internet
• The "Plugins Catalog" and the "Add new connection" pages do not hang if the GCOM connection is slow or times out. In case the connection is slow, then the remotely available plugins will load later.
• The "Plugins Catalog" and the "Add new connection" operate correctly when there is internet connection

[mgyongyosi]

@leventebalogh Can we move this feature behind a config option to disable the outgoing requests? (To prevent any failed requests if the customer knows that Grafana is running without internet access and/or in a restricted environment)

[leventebalogh]

@mgyongyosi That might be a good idea for the future, however probably something that we should bring up in the plugins-platform team first to discuss it.

[mckn]

LGTM!

[grafana-delivery-bot]

The backport to v10.2.x failed:

The process '/usr/bin/git' failed with exit code 1

To backport manually, run these commands in your terminal:

# Fetch latest updates from GitHub
git fetch
# Create a new branch
git switch --create backport-77978-to-v10.2.x origin/v10.2.x
# Cherry-pick the merged commit of this pull request and resolve the conflicts
git cherry-pick -x ea12eecac593548b3c024b096cd6e4f329a6e532

When the conflicts are resolved, stage and commit the changes:

git add . && git cherry-pick --continue

If you have the GitHub CLI installed:

# Push the branch to GitHub:
git push --set-upstream origin backport-77978-to-v10.2.x
# Create the PR body template
PR_BODY=$(gh pr view 77978 --json body --template 'Backport ea12eecac593548b3c024b096cd6e4f329a6e532 from #77978{{ "\n\n---\n\n" }}{{ index . "body" }}')
# Create the PR on GitHub
echo "${PR_BODY}" | gh pr create --title "[v10.2.x] Plugins: Keep working when there is no internet access" --body-file - --label "type/bug" --label "area/plugins" --label "area/frontend" --label "add to changelog" --label "area/plugins-catalog" --label "backport" --base v10.2.x --milestone 10.2.x --web

Or, if you don't have the GitHub CLI installed (we recommend you install it!):

# Push the branch to GitHub:
git push --set-upstream origin backport-77978-to-v10.2.x

# Create a pull request where the `base` branch is `v10.2.x` and the `compare`/`head` branch is `backport-77978-to-v10.2.x`.

# Remove the local backport branch
git switch main
git branch -D backport-77978-to-v10.2.x