Adding Kibana plugins

[dot-mike]

Hi,

I am wondering as a developer, what are the possibilities for adding a locally developed Kibana-plugin for testing / verification purpose? I know I can start kibana in the Kibana-repo, but I want to test the plugin the elastic-package. Thanks.

[jsoriano]

Hey @dot-mike,

elastic-package is not intended for Kibana plugins development, but if you want to try a plugin with elastic-package, you can create a custom image for Kibana for the plugin and use it.

You can find here the instructions to create a custom docker image: https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/deploy/cloud-on-k8s/k8s-kibana-plugins.

Once you have the custom docker image, see how to use custom images here: https://github.com/elastic/elastic-package/blob/main/docs/howto/custom_images.md

And if you need custom kibana configuration, see https://github.com/elastic/elastic-package/blob/main/docs/howto/custom_kibana_config.md

I am going to close the issue by now, as Kibana plugins are not something that we aim to support in elastic-package. Please let me know if you think we should add some plugin in relation to Elastic Packages development.

Thanks!

[dot-mike]

@jsoriano thanks for the quick feedback and the helpful links! My use case was to have a stack boot up quick and easy and add plugins to it. I really like the elastic-package because the official integrations can easily send their sample data for testing. And my use case if for testing plugins with the sample data!

I think the custom image approach works, but it adds a bit of friction. Having me to build the custom image each time the plugin update.

I was thinking of having a directory within the profile-directory where a user can add their plugin as zip-file and when Kibana starts, it will execute kibana-plugin install as normal. (We would mount the plugin directory on host system as read-only in the container to facilitate for this).

Would it be acceptable if I drafted a PR for this?

[jsoriano]

Sure, the directory with plugins could be placed under the profile directory, like the custom configuration file described in https://github.com/elastic/elastic-package/blob/main/docs/howto/custom_kibana_config.md

Let us know when you have the PR.

Thanks!