Overview of Tanzu Developer Portal plug-ins
This topic gives you an overview of the different plug-in types that Tanzu Developer Portal supports. Some plug-ins are already integrated with Tanzu Developer Portal. Other plug-ins require you to use Configurator to integrate them.
Tanzu Developer Portal plug-ins
A Tanzu Developer Portal plug-in is a Backstage plug-in inside a wrapper. The wrapper makes it possible to dynamically integrate a Backstage plug-in into Tanzu Developer Portal. The wrapper defines integration points with the underlying Backstage instance to remove the need to manually update source code when adding a Backstage plug-in.
Tanzu Application Platform plug-ins
Tanzu Application Platform includes some pre-built Tanzu Developer plug-ins. These Tanzu Application Platform plug-ins are already integrated with Tanzu Developer Portal. You don’t need to configure these plug-ins. To use a Tanzu Application Platform plug-in, you must install the relevant Tanzu Application Platform component.
Tanzu Application Platform has the following Tanzu Developer Portal plug-ins:
- Runtime Resources Visibility
- Application Live View
- Application Accelerator
- API Documentation
- Supply Chain Choreographer
- Security Analysis
- DORA Metrics
Backstage plug-ins
Backstage plug-ins are developed by Backstage and are in the @backstage namespace.
Community plug-ins
Community plug-ins are not developed by Backstage or VMware. These plug-ins are not in the @backstage namespace.
Validated plug-ins
Validated plug-ins are Backstage plug-ins or community plug-ins that VMware has validated for use with Tanzu Developer Portal. You don’t need to create custom wrappers to integrate these plug-ins with Tanzu Developer Portal.
For more information, see the validated community plug-ins section.
External plug-ins
External plug-ins (also referred to as custom plug-ins) are plug-ins that are not in Tanzu Developer Portal Configurator.
These plug-ins are typically published to npmjs.org or a similar npm registry alternative. If you want to integrate an external plug-in that is not validated for use with Tanzu Developer Portal, you must write a custom wrapper for it.
