Getting started with dynamic plugins

To get started using the dynamic plugin, you must set up your environment to write a new OpenShift Container Platform dynamic plugin. For an example of how to write a new plugin, see Adding a tab to the pods page.

Dynamic plugin development

You can run the plugin using a local development environment. The OpenShift Container Platform web console runs in a container connected to the cluster you have logged into.

Prerequisites

You must have cloned the console-plugin-template repository, which contains a template for creating plugins.

Important

Red Hat does not support custom plugin code. Only Cooperative community support is available for your plugin.
You must have an OpenShift Container Platform cluster running.
You must have the OpenShift CLI (oc) installed.
You must have yarn installed.
You must have Docker v3.2.0 or later or Podman v3.2.0 or later installed and running.

Procedure

Open two terminal windows.
In one terminal window, run the following command to install the dependencies for your plugin using yarn.
```
$ yarn install
```
After installing, run the following command to start yarn.
```
$ yarn run start
```
In another terminal window, login to the OpenShift Container Platform web console through the CLI.
```
$ oc login
```
Run the OpenShift Container Platform web console in a container connected to the cluster you have logged in to by running the following command:
```
$ yarn run start-console
```
Note

The yarn run start-console command runs an amd64 image and might fail when run with Apple Silicon and Podman. You can work around it with qemu-user-static by running the following commands:
```
$ podman machine ssh
```
```
$ sudo -i
```
```
$ rpm-ostree install qemu-user-static
```
```
$ systemctl reboot
```

Verification

Visit localhost:9000 to view the running plugin. Inspect the value of window.SERVER_FLAGS.consolePlugins to see the list of plugins which load at runtime.