Plug-In Package Overview

A plug-in package is a ZIP archive file that contains all of the plug-in modules in your solution along with a package manifest.

The package manifest describes deployment information for each plug-in module using XML metadata. The

vSphere Client

Extension Manager uses this metadata to install and deploy each plug-in module in the plug-in package.

To create a plug-in package, you must create a ZIP archive file with the following structure:

At the root level, add a

plugin-package.xml

file to the root folder.

At the root level, add a

plugins

folder.

Inside the

plugins

folder, add one WAR files containing the plug-in UI modules.

Inside the

plugins

folder, add zero or more JAR files, one for each Java service component created for your plug-in.

Inside the

plugins

folder, add zero or more JAR files, one for each third party Java library used by your plug-in.

You can use any text or XML editor to create the

plugin-package.xml

file.

Each WAR file or JAR file must contain an OSGi-compliant

META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

file that describes the bundle.

For the vSphere 8.0 release, local plug-ins must be upgraded as follows:

VMware vSphere SDKs and Tools 8.0