Forge needs a de-centralized plugin distribution and repository system

There is no disputing the value of this type of feature, as has been shown with App-stores of all kinds. This would be relatively simple to implement as a Maven-based system, delegating all of the artifact resolution and dependency management to Maven.

Features Forge would need to provide:

1) Built-in plugins and native APIs to search/install/remove/update plug-ins (easy using forge Resource APIs + Aether to add/remove JARs.) This internal plugin/commands could be called "forge" for simplicity

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$ forge plugin-find prettyfaces

Forge found the following plugins in specified repositories: <--- notice the 'forgeplugin' classifier used to identify forge plugins from other artifacts.

• http://ocpsoft.com/repository ...... [prettyfaces] com.ocpsoft.pretty.faces:prettyfaces-forgeplugin:[... 3.1.0, 3.2.0, 3.2.1]
• http://repo1.maven.org/ .............. [prettyfaces] com.ocpsoft.pretty.faces:prettyfaces-forgeplugin:3.1.0

$ forge plugin-install prettyfaces --version 3.1.0

**SUCCESS** [prettyfaces] plugin was successfully installed. You will need to restart forge to see these changes.

$ forge plugin-list

Listing installed plugins:

• prettyfaces [3.1.0]
• forge-scaffold [1.0.0.Alpha1]
• forge-javaee6 [1.0.0.Alpha1]
• home-control [1.0.0.Alpha1]

$ forge plugin-remove prettyfaces

Are you sure you you want to remove the plugin(s) [prettyfaces] [Y,n]? Y
**SUCCESS** [prettyfaces] plugin was successfully removed. You will need to restart forge to see these changes.

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2) Plugin repository management (add/remove/edit/list current plugin repository targets.)

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$ forge repo-list

Currently using the following plugin repositories:

• 1. https://repository.jboss.org/nexus/content/groups/public/
• 2. http://ocpsoft.com/repository
• 3. http://example.com/forge/plugin-repository

$ forge repo-add http://jboss.org/forge/repository/ <-- These two will be KEY, we NEED THESE to happen
$ forge repo-add http://javaee.org/forge/repository/

$ forge repo-list

Currently using the following plugin repositories:

• 1. https://repository.jboss.org/nexus/content/groups/public/
• 2. http://ocpsoft.com/repository
• 3. http://example.com/forge/plugin-repository
• 4. http://jboss.org/forge/repository/
• 5. http://javaee.org/forge/repository/

$ forge repo-del 5

**SUCCESS** removed repository http://javaee.org/forge/repository/. Plugins installed from this repository will no longer be auto-updated, and can be removed using [forge plugin-remove

{plugin-id}

]

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3) Auto-update functionality

Periodically search for updates to existing plugins (or search on request) - ask users if they would like to see a list of updates or perform an automated update / update individual plugins.

4) A meta-data system of identifying compatible versions of plugins w/running version of forge.

Possibly need to create a maven packaging type and build plugin in order to facilitate this type of additional metadata and artifact resolution. (Or could require a <classifier>forgeplugin</classifier>. We already have the maven GAV (GroupId : ArtifactId : Version) information. Supplemented with this classifier, we could easily identify forge plugins from other artifacts in maven.