Server Plugin Developer Workflow - Document rebuild and redeploy steps. about mattermost-developer-documentation

[sadohert]

Thanks @levb .... I'll close this issue. Ultimately I wanted to understand the "developer workflow" for code > build > deploy > test > repeat. I wasn't finding repeating the steps in the server/plugin docs was resulting in a sane workflow (seemed like I was having to restart the server and kill plugins to see updated behaviour)... BUT, after:

1. Updating my server to the latest,
2. Removing the mattermost-demo-plugin from my local setup (this still doesn't seem to clean up properly on make stop-server, I'll submit somethign separate),
3. Setting up these environment variables:

export MM_SERVICESETTINGS_SITEURL=http://localhost:8065
export MM_ADMIN_USERNAME=<admin account>
export MM_ADMIN_PASSWORD=<admin password>

I can successfully code > build > deploy > test > repeat without server restarts or killing plugins.

Thanks

[hanzei]

Hey @sadohert,

The most efficient approach is to run just make deploy. It takes care of removing the old plugin and enables the new installed version. No further steps are needed.

The site you linked is a generic introduction into plugins. make deploy is only available on plugins which use the Sample Plugin template. Hence I would much rather improve the readme on https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-plugin-sample/.

What do you think about this?

[sadohert]

Ahhh yes. I wasn't thinking about the make deploy being a plugin project-specific thing. So yes, probably makes sense to improve the readme.

But even within the context of someone building a plugin with their own build scripts, are you saying we should be able to just replace the plugin binary and the server will pick this up and start using it? For me, I:

• cloned the plugin-sample,
• edited the hello world print statement with a new string,
• rebuilt with make deploy, and then
• refreshed http://<myserver>/plugins/<my cloned plugin>

... and I don't see the changed string (e.g., "Hello World 2"). I checked the timestamp of the plugin binary file on the server and it's updated. Only way I'm able to get the plugin behaviour to change (i.e., print my new string) is to disable and re-enable the plugin. As soon as I disable then re-enable, the plugin string changes.

Maybe something else I'm doing wrong?

My setup follows these server development instructions.

Incidentally, in previous testing I noticed that make stop-server wasn't actually killing the process for the 2 plugins I have installed (mattermost-plugin-sample, and mattermost-plugin-demo). I had to manually kill them.... discussed this with @lieut-data and was going to submit a separate report for that.

[levb]

@sadohert did you update your server to the most recent master? The exit time dead-lock you were referring to was leaving the old plugin executables running even after you kill the server. I would also recommend tailing the server logs to make sure make deploy worked as designed.

1/5 the issue here was not so much the quality of the documentation (which should be improved!), but a combination of (a) bug(s), and (b) lack of detailed visibility into each plugin's deployment history and/or running status details (including the plugin-specific logs?). IMO we need to improve the latter to help us diagnose and service these kinds of situations.

[hanzei]

Thank you very much for your feedback @sadohert!