Summary

Investigate and document the implications of supporting multiple plugin catalog sources on the Extensions catalog backend module (catalog-backend-module-extensions). Identify any required changes, risks, and recommendations.

Background

The install team is implementing support for multiple plugin catalog OCI images. The init container will extract each source to a subdirectory under /extensions, and the BaseEntityProvider will read all sources via its existing recursive glob behavior.This spike investigates whether additional changes are needed in the extensions plugin to properly support multi-source scenarios.

Areas to Investigate

1. Entity Identity and Collisions

• What happens when multiple sources define entities with the same kind/namespace/name?

• Should namespace be used to separate sources?
• What are the options for collision detection or prevention?

2. Source Identification

• Should entities be annotated with their origin source?

• Would this enable future features (filtering, troubleshooting)?

3. Entity Provider Behavior

• Does the current applyMutation({ type: 'full' }) approach work correctly with multiple sources?

• Are there race conditions or ordering issues?

4. Cleanup/Orphan Handling

• If a source is removed, what happens to its entities?

• Is this a problem for MVP or a future concern?

5. Backwards Compatibility

• Do any changes affect existing single-source deployments?