Plugin tooling [plugin-tooling]

Automatic plugin generator [automatic-plugin-generator]

We recommend that you kick-start your plugin by generating it with the {{kib}} Plugin Generator. Run the following in the {{kib}} repo, and you will be asked a couple of questions, see some progress bars, and have a freshly generated plugin ready for you to play with in {{kib}}'s plugins folder.

node scripts/generate_plugin

Pass --name <plugin_name> with -y to generate non-interactively using the defaults.

Plugin location [_plugin_location]

External plugins live in a plugins/ directory at the root of your {{kib}} checkout, for example:

.
└── kibana
    └── plugins
        ├── foo-plugin
        └── bar-plugin

The plugins/ directory is gitignored, so your plugin is not tracked alongside the {{kib}} sources. {{kib}} discovers external plugins by scanning this directory at startup and reading each plugin's kibana.json manifest, so you do not need to run yarn kbn bootstrap after dropping in a new plugin or editing its manifest.

:::{note} External plugins use a flat kibana.json manifest. This differs from the nested kibana.jsonc manifest used by in-repo {{kib}} plugins — see Anatomy of a plugin for the in-repo format. :::

Build plugin distributable [_build_plugin_distributable]

::::{warning} {{kib}} distributable is not shipped with @kbn/optimizer anymore. You need to pre-build your plugin for use in production. ::::

You can leverage @kbn/plugin-helpers to build a distributable archive for your plugin. The package transpiles the plugin code, adds polyfills, and links necessary js modules in the runtime. You don’t need to install the plugin-helpers dependency. If you created the plugin using node scripts/generate_plugin script, package.json is already pre-configured. To build your plugin run within your plugin folder:

yarn build

It will output azip archive in kibana/plugins/my_plugin_name/build/ folder.

Install a plugin from archive [_install_a_plugin_from_archive]

See How to install a plugin.

Run {{kib}} with your plugin in dev mode [_run_kib_with_your_plugin_in_dev_mode]

External plugins use a two-terminal workflow in development. Unlike in-repo plugins, their browser bundles are not built by the {{kib}} optimizer at startup, so you drive the build yourself from inside the plugin directory.

In the first terminal, build and watch the browser bundle from the plugin root:

cd plugins/my_plugin_name
yarn dev --watch

In a second terminal, run yarn start from the {{kib}} root. Confirm {{kib}} discovered your plugin by looking for it in the startup logs:

[INFO ][plugins-system.standard] Setting up […] plugins: […, myPluginName, …]