• Using Forge
• Installation
• Installing new Plugins
• Writing Basic Java EE App
• Samples
• Configure HTTP Proxy
• Profiling Forge
• Debugging Forge
• FAQ
• Affiliation
• Get involved
• Contribute or Get Involved
• Release Guide
• Improve our documentation
• Important plugins
• Arquillian Testing
• UI Scaffolding
• Developing plugins
• Developing a plugin
• Reference Forge API
• Implement the Plugin interface
• Give your Plugin a name
• Add Commands to your Plugin
• Add Options to your Commands
• Enable Piping between Commands
• Enable modular functionality with Facets
• Test your Plugin
• Reference Libraries
• Make your Plugin available to Forge
• Add your Plugin to the Central Plugin Index
• Important APIs
• Configure a plugin repository for Forge

Configure a plugin repository for Forge

The default plugin repository

Forge uses the Central Plugin Index (introduced in an earlier section) as the default plugin repository. However, you may not be in a position to publish your plugins to everyone – they could be in private repositories sealed off from the rest of the world. In such an event, you can use your own custom plugin repository. This could be an organization-wide plugin repository.

How does Forge locate the default plugin repository?

Forge locates the default plugin repository through the DEFAULT_PLUGIN_REPO environment variable. The default value is https://raw.github.com/forge/plugin-repository/master/repository.yaml which is none other than the location of the YAML file for the Central Plugin Index.

Modifying the location of the default plugin repository

The location of the default plugin repository can be modified by setting a new value to the DEFAULT_PLUGIN_REPO environment variable:

set DEFAULT_PLUGIN_REPO "http://example.com/repository.yaml"

To make this change permanent, you can create or modify the Forge script file that is executed by Forge on startup. The script file is named config and is located in directory identified by the FORGE_CONFIG_DIR environment variable. On most installations, the config file would be present in the .forge directory under your user home directory. On Linux/Unix/Mac OS, this is ~/.forge. On Windows 7 and higher, this would be C:\Users\<username>\.forge\.

The contents of this file include the following lines:

@/* Automatically generated config file */;
about;
set HISTORY true;
set PROMPT "[\c{green}$PROJECT_NAME\c] \c{blue}\W\c \c{green}\$\c ";
set PROMPT_NOPROJ "[\c{red}no project\c] \c{blue}\W\c \c{red}\$\c ";
set DEFAULT_PLUGIN_REPO "https://raw.github.com/forge/plugin-repository/master/repository.yaml";
set IGNOREEOF 1;

To modify the default plugin repository permanently, modify the value of the environment variable (in line 6), like so:

@/* Automatically generated config file */;
about;
set HISTORY true;
set PROMPT "[\c{green}$PROJECT_NAME\c] \c{blue}\W\c \c{green}\$\c ";
set PROMPT_NOPROJ "[\c{red}no project\c] \c{blue}\W\c \c{red}\$\c ";
set DEFAULT_PLUGIN_REPO "http://example.com/repository.yaml";
set IGNOREEOF 1;

We recommend that the contents of this custom plugin repository file, be synchronized with the contents of the default Central Plugin Index from time to time. The best way to do this, would be to maintain a fork of the Central Plugin Index. This will ensure that you can install plugins from both the central plugin index as well as from the private repositories.