Adding tools to Che after creating a workspace

When installed in a workspace, Che plug-ins bring new capabilities to Che. Plug-ins consist of a Che-Theia plug-in, metadata, and a hosting container. These plug-ins may provide the following capabilities:

  • Integrating with other systems, including Kubernetes or OpenShift.

  • Automating some developer tasks, such as formatting, refactoring, and running automated tests.

  • Communicating with multiple databases directly from the IDE.

  • Enhanced code navigation, auto-completion, and error highlighting.

This chapter provides basic information about installing, enabling, and using Che plug-ins in workspaces.

Additional tools in the Che workspace

Che plug-ins are extensions to the Che-Theia IDE that come bundled with container images. These images contain the native prerequisites of their respective extensions. For example, the OpenShift command-line tool is bundled with a command to install it, which ensures the proper functionality of the OpenShift Connector plug-in, all available in the dedicated image.

Plug-ins can also include metadata to define a description, categorization tags, and an icon. Che provides a registry of plug-ins available for installation into the user’s workspace.

The Che-Theia IDE is generally compatible with the VS Code extensions API and VS Code extensions are automatically compatible with Che-Theia. These extensions are possible to package as Che plug-ins by combining them with their dependencies. By default, Che includes a plug-in registry containing common plug-ins.

Adding a plug-in

  • Using the Dashboard:

    • Add a plug-in directly into a devfile using the Devfile tab.

      The devfile can also further the plug-in configuration, such as defining memory or CPU consumption.

  • Using the Che-Theia IDE:

    • By pressing Ctrl+Shift+J or by navigating to View → Plugins.

Additional resources

Adding a language support plug-in to a Che workspace

This procedure describes adding a tool to an existing workspace by enabling a dedicated plug-in from the Dashboard.

To add tools that are available as plug-ins into a Che workspace, use one of the following methods:

This procedure uses the Language Support for Java plug-in as an example.

Prerequisites

  • A running instance of Che. To install an instance of Che, see Installing Che.

  • An existing workspace defined in this instance of Eclipse Che; see:

  • The workspace must be in a stopped state. To stop a workspace:

    1. Navigate to the Che Dashboard. See Navigating Che using the Dashboard.

    2. In the Dashboard, click the Workspaces menu to open the workspaces list and locate the workspace.

    3. On the same row with the displayed workspace, on the right side of the screen, click the square Stop button to stop the workspace.

    4. Wait a few seconds for the workspace to stop (the workspace’s icon on the list will turn grey), then configure the workspace by selecting it.

Procedure

To add the plug-in from the Plug-in registry to an existing Che workspace, use one of the following methods:

  • Installing the plug-in by adding content to the devfile.

    1. Navigate to the Devfile tab. The devfile YAML is displayed.

    2. Locate the components section of the devfile and add the following lines to add the Java language plugin with Java 8 to the workspace:

       - id: redhat/java8/latest
   type: chePlugin

      An example of the final result:

      components:
 - id: redhat/php/latest
   memoryLimit: 1Gi
   type: chePlugin
 - id: redhat/php-debugger/latest
   memoryLimit: 256Mi
   type: chePlugin
 - mountSources: true
   endpoints:
     - name: 8080/tcp
       port: 8080
   memoryLimit: 512Mi
   type: dockerimage
   volumes:
     - name: composer
       containerPath: /home/user/.composer
     - name: symfony
       containerPath: /home/user/.symfony
   alias: php
   image: 'quay.io/eclipse/che-php-7:nightly'
 - id: redhat/java8/latest
   type: chePlugin

    3. On the bottom right side of the screen, save the changes using the Save button. After changes are saved, the workspace can be restarted and will include the new plug-in.

Additional resources