[cli/plugins] plugin installation format requirement and errors

[spalger]

When installing a Kibana plugin that was created by zipping a directory in the root plugins/ directory, the CLI produces a somewhat cryptic error:

"No kibana plugins found in archive"

This is because we identify a plugin by finding files which match the pattern: kibana/*/kibana.json. We should probably improve the error message and maybe remove the restriction that they exist in a kibana directory, but we should consult with other teams to see how they structure their plugins as we may be breaking cross-compatibility if we make any changes here.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-operations (Team:Operations)

[bababrownbear]

I'm having this issue currently, I've tried zipping the plugin from the root plugins folder, and I've run yarn build on a plugin I created with the plugin generator. A screenshot of the source and the build output is below. I manually placed the kibana.json into this directly, and manually created the kibana folder for the plugin, but when I attempt to install the plugin I get "No kibana plugins found in archive."

Source folder

Build zip

Install fails

I've been unsuccessful debugging the issue for why this build output won't install.

If I place just the output in the plugins folder with the added kibana.json, like this:

I get something went wrong when trying to load Kibana.

[spalger]

Hey @bababrownbear, I'm working on updating the kibana-helpers tooling for building Kibana Platform plugins right now. Keep an eye on #66687 for updates. The plugin zip you create should more closely resemble the plugin you have in plugins/ss_update_index and should have it's own target/public directory. The kibana.json file you have for development is the one that should be in the distributable.

When you create the zip of the plugins/ss_update_index directory make sure it is within a kibana directory. The plugin installer looks for kibana.json files in kibana/*/kibana.json.

[bababrownbear]

@spalger Thank you! Still having troubles though.
This is the zip I created:

It's my plugin inside of a kibana folder. Kibana.json is within kibana/*/kibana.json.

I ran the plugin install for the zip, and it still said 'No kibana plugins found in archive.'.

[spalger]

Ah, didn't realize you are using tools from an installation. The changes to look for kibana.json are in #74604, which hasn't shipped yet and are slotted to ship with 7.10.

To use then in development you need to use node scripts/kibana_plugin instead of bin/kibana-plugin.

[bababrownbear]

Thank you for the insight. Is there a way to get my plugin to be installable on 7.8.0 then? Or I can only use this in development?

[spalger]

For 7.8 you need to use the legacy plugin format. That means using a package.json file and a kibana.json file at the same time. The package.json file doesn't need to include much, but I think it does need to have a "name", and "version" (which needs to match the Kibana version you're targeting). Kibana 7.8 should identify that your plugin is using the Kibana Platform because it has a kibana.json file. Additionally, you might find it easier to just extract your plugin into the plugins directory by hand until we revampt the tooling for KP support in 7.10.

If just adding a package.json file to your plugin doesn't work you might want to try generating a new plugin in 7.7 or 7.8 and then adding your specific plugin code to the generated plugin.