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Document process for registering a plugin as a Packer Integration #12702

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Document process for registering a plugin as a Packer Integration #12702

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Document process for registering a plugin as a Packer Integration
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21 changes: 21 additions & 0 deletions .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/plugin_integration.md
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---
name: Plugin Integration Request
about: Open request to add your plugin as a Packer integration (https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/integrations)
labels: integration-request
---

#### Description

A written description of your plugin along with a link to the plugin repository.

#### Integration Tier
<!--- By default all integrations are registered as community integrations.
HashiCorp Technology partners https://www.hashicorp.com/partners/find-a-partner will be registered as a partner once verified. --->

#### Checklist
- [] Has valid [`metadata.hcl`](https://github.com/hashicorp/integration-template) file in plugin repository.
- [] Has added integration scripts [packer-plugin-scaffolding](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-scoffolding) to plugin repository.
- [] Has added top-level integration README.md file to plugin `docs` directory.
- [] All plugins components have one README.md describing their usage.
- [] Has a fully synced `.web-docs` directory ready for publishing to the integrations portal.

184 changes: 57 additions & 127 deletions website/content/docs/plugins/creation/index.mdx
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Expand Up @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ page_title: Extending
# Developing Plugins

Packer is extensible and supports plugins that let you
create and use custom builders, provisioners, post-processors, and data sources. This page explains how to develop Packer plugins. Before you begin, we recommend reviewing the Packer documentation and the instructions for [installing external plugins](/packer/docs/plugins/install-plugins).
create and use custom builders, provisioners, post-processors, and data sources. This page explains how to develop Packer plugins. Before you begin, we recommend reviewing the Packer documentation and the instructions for [installing external plugins](https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/docs/plugins/install-plugins).

~> **Warning** This is an advanced topic. You should have strong knowledge of Packer before you start writing plugins.

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -49,15 +49,7 @@ danger of colliding dependencies.

- [`github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-sdk/plugin`](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-sdk/plugin) - Contains the code to serve the plugin. This handles all the inter-process communication.

Basic examples of serving your component are shown below. Note that if you
define a multi-component plugin, you can (but do not need to) add more than one
component per plugin binary. The multi-component plugin is also compatible with
download and installation via `packer init`, whereas the single-component plugin
is not.

<Tabs>

<Tab heading="Multi-component Plugin (recommended) ">
Basic examples of serving your component are shown below.

```go
// main.go
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -107,46 +99,9 @@ the following components available:
- the `my-foo` post-processor
- the `my-bar` provisioner

</Tab>

<Tab heading="Single Component Plugin (deprecated)">

```go
// main.go

import (
"github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-sdk/plugin"
)

// Assume this implements the packer.Builder interface
type Builder struct{}

func main() {
server, err := plugin.Server()
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
server.RegisterBuilder(new(Builder))
server.Serve()
}
```

This `server.Serve()` invocation handles all the details of communicating with
Packer core and serving your component over RPC. As long as your struct being
registered implements one of the component interfaces, Packer will now be able
to launch your plugin and use it.

Please note that single-component plugins exist for backwards-compatability. We
would rather you register your component using the multi-component method shown
in the other tab, even if you only have one component in your binary. This is
because the `packer init` command only supports multi-component plugins.

</Tab>
</Tabs>

Next, build your plugin as you would any other Go application. The resulting
binary is the plugin that can be installed using
[standard installation procedures](/packer/docs/plugins#installing-plugins).
[standard installation procedures](https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/docs/plugins#installing-plugins).

This documentation explains how to implement each type of plugin interface: builders, data sources, provisioners, and post-processors.

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -212,89 +167,64 @@ Here's what you need to create releases using GitHub Actions:
releaser is working. The tag must be a valid
[Semantic Version](https://semver.org/) preceded with a `v`. Once the tag is pushed, the github actions you just configured will automatically build release binaries that Packer can download using `packer init`. For more details on how
to install a plugin using `packer init`, see the
[init docs](/packer/docs/commands/init).

## Registering Plugin Documentation

~> Note: Registering a remote plugin's plugin documentation requires the use of [Packer's plugin docs configuration](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-scaffolding/tree/main/docs).

`packer init` allows users to require and install remote Packer plugins, those not bundled with Packer core, that have been published to GitHub automatically.
To help with the discovery of remote Packer plugins on GitHub, plugins maintainers can choose to register plugin documentation for each component directly on the [Packer Documentation Page](/packer/docs).

The registration process requires the creation of a `docs.zip` file archive containing the `.mdx` files for each of the plugin components in the remote plugin's repository. A working example can be seen at the [packer-plugin-docker repository](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-docker/releases/latest).

Once in place the remote plugin can be added to Packer's website builds by opening a pull-request against [hashicorp/packer](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer), with the needed configuration for pulling in the remote documentation.

Remote plugins will have their components listed under the respected types (i.e builders, provisioners, etc) using the names specified in the remote block configuration, and labeled with their respective [tier and namespace](/packer/docs/plugins#tiers-and-namespaces).

To register a plugin follow one of the following setups

<Tabs>
<Tab heading="Generating docs.zip on plugin release">

Documentation for a plugin is maintained within the `docs` directory and served on GitHub.

To include plugin docs on the website, a global pre-hook has been added to the main scaffolding [.goreleaser.yml](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-scaffolding/blob/42e5b0b1e575879b0477cb6d4291e027f4d92f85/.goreleaser.yml#L10) file, that if uncommented will generate and include a docs.zip file as part of the plugin release.

The `docs.zip` file contains all of the `.mdx` files under the plugins root `docs/` directory that the website can consume remotely.

</Tab>

<Tab heading="Manually generating docs.zip">

You can generate the required documentation structure manually by creating a zip file called `docs.zip` of the docs directory and including that zip file in the plugin release.

```/bin/bash
[[ -d docs/ ]] && zip -r docs.zip docs/
[init docs](https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/docs/commands/init).

## Registering Plugins

~> Note: Registering a plugin as an integration requires the documentation to match the [Scaffolding example layout](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-scaffolding/tree/main/.web-docs).

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To help with the discovery of Packer plugins, plugins maintainers can choose to register their plugin as a [Packer Integration](https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/integrations).

The registration process requires [metadata configuration](https://github.com/hashicorp/integration-template#metadata-configuration) to be added to your plugin repository for configuring the Packer integration pipeline and
a specific directory structure for plugin documentation to be rendered on the [Packer Integrations](https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/integrations) portal.
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You can execute the following steps to register your plugin as an integration:

1. Update your plugin documentation structure to match the [Scaffolding example layout](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-scaffolding/tree/main/.web-docs).
New plugins generated from this template have the necessary structure in place. If so you can jump to step 3.
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1. For the integrations library, only one top-level README per integration is supported. Any top-level index.mdx files that exist
within a plugin's existing documentation will need to migrate to a top-level README.
1. Update your top-level integration README to include a description, plugin installation steps, available components section, and, any, additional sections
needed to inform users on how to work with your integration. Refer to [Packer scaffolding plugin](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-scaffolding/blob/main/docs/README.md) for an example.
1. Update the top-level README for each of the components within your integration to follow the structure defined in the scaffolding template.
1. Add the integration configuration file [metadata.hcl](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-scaffolding/blob/main/.web-docs/metadata.hcl) to the plugins `.web-docs` directory.
1. Open a request for integration issue with the Packer team - [Open Request](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/issues/new?labels=new-plugin-contribution&template=plugin_integration.md).
Provide all the requested information to help expedite the integration request.

#### [Example] Add integration files to existing plugin repository

```shell
## Update Plugin repository with integration config, workflows, and scripts
cd packer-plugin-name
mkdir -p .web-docs/scripts

# Download packer-plugin-scaffolding repo copy files
wget https://github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-scaffolding/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
unzip main.zip
cp packer-plugin-scaffolding-main/.web-docs/metadata.hcl .web-docs/
cp -r packer-plugin-scaffolding-main/.web-docs/scripts/ .web-docs/scripts/
cp .github/workflows/notify-integration-release-via-* .github/workflows/

# Remove downloaded scaffolding project
rm main.zip
rm -rf packer-plugin-scaffolding-main

# Add the following commands to your plugin GNUmakefile
generate: install-packer-sdc
@go generate ./...
@rm -rf .docs
@packer-sdc renderdocs -src docs -partials docs-partials/ -dst .docs/
@./.web-docs/scripts/compile-to-webdocs.sh "." ".docs" ".web-docs" "<orgname>"
@rm -r ".docs"
```

</Tab>
</Tabs>

Once the first `docs.zip` file has been included into a release you will need to open a one time pull-request against [hashicorp/packer](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer) to register the plugin docs.
By opening an integration request, you are asking a member of the to Packer team to review your plugin integration configuration, plugin documentation,
and, finally, to open an internal pull-request to finalize the integration setup.

This is done by adding the block below for the respective plugin to the file [website/data/plugins-manifest.json](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/blob/main/website/data/plugins-manifest.json).

```json
{
"title": "Scaffolding",
"path": "scaffolding",
"repo": "hashicorp/packer-plugin-scaffolding",
"version": "latest",
"sourceBranch": "main"
}
```

If a plugin maintainer wishes to only include a specific version of released docs, then the `"version"` key in the above configuration should be set to a released version of the plugin. Otherwise it should be set to `"latest"`.

The `"sourceBranch"` key in the above configuration ensures potential contributors can link back to source files in the plugin repository from the Packer docs site. If a `"sourceBranch"` value is not present, it will default to `"main"`.

### Testing Plugin Documentation

Before publishing the `docs.zip` file, you might want to preview your documentation changes.
We provide a mechanism that allows to preview how the docs will look like within
the Packer documentation.

Follow the next steps to get the Packer website running and preview the documentation changes:

- Get the [Packer source code](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer). Our website code is under the [website folder](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/tree/main/website).
- Generate the `docs.zip` file. You can find above the steps to do so.
- Add the `zipFile` attribute to the plugin entry in `plugins-manifest.json`. The value should be the full path of the `docs.zip` generated. For example:

```json
{
"title": "Scaffolding",
"path": "scaffolding",
"repo": "hashicorp/packer-plugin-scaffolding",
"version": "latest",
"sourceBranch": "main",
"zipFile": "/Users/myuser/Packer/plugins/packer-plugin-scaffolding/docs.zip"
}
```
Plugin integrations will be listed as a [Packer Integration](https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/integrations), with details on how to install and use your the plugin.

- Go to the [website folder](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/tree/main/website).
In the website README, follow the steps to [run the website with node](https://github.com/hashicorp/packer/tree/main/website#with-node).
- Once the website is up and running, the plugin documentation should be available in `http://localhost:3000/docs`.
Plugin integrations, once deployed, can be updated manually, or automatically upon a new release, by the plugin authors. Changes to the defined documentation structure
or parent repository should be communicated to the Packer team to ensure a working integration pipeline.
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how should the communication be? through which channel?

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🤷‍♂️ - good question. I'll suggest opening an issue or sending an email to the packer integration distro.

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Maybe add the information here as well


## Plugin Development Tips and FAQs

Expand Down