VMware vSphere SDKs and Tools 8.0

8.0 7.0 6.7 6.5

Best Practices for Creating Plug-In Packages

To meet the requirements of your virtual environment, you must extend the capabilities of the
vSphere Client
 by creating plug-in modules. Depending on your extension solution, you can extend the user interface layer and the service layer of the
vSphere Client
.
Incorrect structure of the plug-in package leads to deployment errors. To avoid these errors, consider the following best practices when creating your plug-in packages.
  • Use the generation tools provided with the
    vSphere Client
     SDK to develop your
    vSphere Client
     extensions and create plug-in packages.
  • Verify that the structure of the plug-in package is as follows:
    • plugin-package.xml
       - The file describes general information about the plug-in package, the deployment order of the plug-in modules, and any dependencies upon other plug-in packages.
    • plugins
       folder - The folder contains one or more JAR and WAR files that represent the user interface and Java services components. Limit the number of third-party libraries that you add to this folder.
  • To avoid installation errors, make sure that all third-party libraries that you use are added inside the JAR and WAR files of the plug-in package and not inside the
    plugins
     folder. If you add third-party libraries to the
    plugins
     folder, the bundles must be OSGi-compliant. Because the
    vSphere Client
     resides on the Tomcat Web Server, which is based on the SpringSource dm Server and is built on top of the Equinox OSGi framework, third-party libraries must be packaged as OSGi bundles. OSGi bundles must include an OSGi manifest file that contains correct and thorough OSGi metadata.
  • To avoid deployment errors generated by the Tomcat server, make sure that you do not include third-party libraries that are already available on the server. You can navigate to the
    html-client-sdk/server/webapps/h5-bridge-webapp.war/WEB-INF/eclipse/plugins
     directory to view the available libraries.
  • If your plug-in package contains both user interface and Java service components, place the Java service components before the user interface components in the plug-in package manifest file. Use the
    <bundlesOrder>
     element to specify the order in which the bundles are deployed to the
    vSphere Client
    .
  • For best performance, when designing your
    vSphere Client
     extension, limit the number of files included in the
    plugins
     folder of your plug-in package. Ideally, your plug-in package must contain only one WAR file, which contains the user interface plug-in modules, and one JAR file, which contains the Java service plug-in modules. Fragmenting your code into many bundles might significantly increase the deployment time and memory consumption.
  • To avoid compatibility issues in case your plug-in package depends on other plug-in packages with specific versions, make sure that you define correctly the plug-in dependencies by using the
    match
     parameter of the
    dependencies
     element in your
    plugin-package.xml
     manifest file. Otherwise, after the
    vSphere Client
     deploys your plug-in package, the plug-in will not work because the plug-in dependencies cannot be resolved and may cause errors in the
    vSphere Client
    .
    For example, you can use the following lines in the manifest file of your plug-in package to define the minimum supported version of the
    vSphere Client
    : 
     ... 
   <dependencies>
      <pluginPackage id="com.vmware.vsphere.client"
                     version="5.5.0" match=“greaterOrEqual" />
   </dependencies>
 ...
    If your plug-in package is only compatible with a specific version of the
    vSphere Client
    , you must use the
    equal
     value of the
    match
     attribute to specify the version. In this way, you ensure that when you upgrade the
    vSphere Client
    , your plug-in package is not deployed, and does not cause any errors.
    If the
    match
     attribute is not provided, the default value is
    greaterOrEqual
    .
  • To avoid deployment failures, you must create a ZIP archive file for your
    vSphere Client
     extension. Moreover, if you want to complete successfully the certification for your
    vSphere Client
     plug-in, know that the plug-in signing tool signs only plug-ins that have the ZIP file format.
For the vSphere 8.0 release, local plug-ins must be upgraded as follows:

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