| # Plugin System |
| |
| The Aspect CLI has a plugin system that allows engineers to easily build |
| features on top of Bazel. |
| |
| ## Glossary |
| |
| - Aspect CLI Core, or simply Core, refers to the core system of the CLI that |
| holds the control over the lifecycle of Plugin instances. |
| - Plugin instance, or sometimes just Plugin, refers to a binary application that |
| uses this SDK to extend the functionality of the Core. |
| - Plugin maintainer refers to a person that maintains a Plugin implementation. |
| - Aspect CLI SDK refers to the development kit that abstracts away all the |
| complexity of implementing a Plugin for the Core. |
| |
| ## Overview |
| |
| The Core exposes 2 integration categories for Plugins: |
| |
| 1. The Build Event Protocol (BEP). |
| 2. Hooks for the lifecycle of the Core. |
| |
| ## Integration categories |
| |
| ### The Build Event Protocol (BEP) |
| |
| The BEP is documented |
| [here](https://docs.bazel.build/versions/main/build-event-protocol.html). |
| Plugins can listen to the BEP events in real-time. The Core intercepts all the |
| events from Bazel using the exposed gRPC Build Event Service and re-constructing |
| the original BEP events. The Core, then, forwards each event to the Plugins. |
| |
| ### Hooks |
| |
| The Core exposes multiple hook points that can be easily accessed when |
| implementing Plugins with the SDK. See each SDK documentation for more details |
| on which hooks are exposed. |
| |
| ## Current SDK |
| |
| See [the current SDK README](/pkg/plugin/sdk/v1alpha1/README.md). |
