lekkimworld.complugins

Creating a keystore for plugin signing the easy way

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:34:37 GMT

Previously when creating keystores for plugin signing I've used a lot of dark magic, crying at the moon and a custom tool I wrote called KeystoreUtil to convert between different formats. The other day I was doing a consulting gig on plugin signing and came up with an easier way just using iKeyman and the Java tooling. I created a presentation with the various commands and screenshots and put it on Slideshare.

Hope it will help someone.

Creating a keystore for plugin signing the easy way

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DNUG 2011 video of yours truly - Plug yourself in and your apps will never be the same!

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:37:21 GMT

The kind people from DNUG was kind enough to tape my presentation in November and send me a link to the video. Sides being extremely weird to see one self on video I thought someone might enjoy it - so here it is. Further down is the presentation on Slideshare from BLUG.

Link to video.

Plug yourself in and your app will never be the same (1 hr edition)

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I will be giving two sessions at DNUG in November

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:27:42 GMT

As mentioned previously I'll be speaking at DNUG in November in Bamberg in Germany where I will be giving my "jumpstart your plugin development"-session about all the plugin development goodness. Besides that I'm also going to join forces with Rene Winkelmeyer (of among other things File Navigator fame) in a two hour session on XPages Extensibility Library titled "XPages Extensibility under the hood". One hour on the basics and a full hour hands-on labs. Hope to see many of you there.

March Lotus Technical Information and Education (LTIE) community meeting

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 07:57:37 GMT

If you're interested in plugin development and the recently published RedWiki on plugin development for Lotus Notes, Sametime and Symphony (easy url is http://bit.ly/pluginredwiki) be sure to join us for the March March Lotus Technical Information and Education (LTIE) community meeting. The conference call will be on 22 March at 10am Central Time (10am Eastern, 3pm CET).

For more info head over to the Lotus Technical Information and Education wiki on Lotus Greenhouse (look under "When we meet" at the bottom of the page).

On plug-ins, features, update sites and extension.xml files...

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:25:48 GMT

I'm receiving quite a few e-mails asking questions about features, plug-ins, update sites and extension.xml files and how they relate so I thought I would try and clarify things.

Term	Description
Plug-in	The smallest unit of code you use to create functionality for an Eclipse based client. This is where the actual Java code is.
Feature	Used to package and bundle plug-ins together. Features are thin wrappers for plug-ins and is basically a single file called feature.xml. You can bundle multiple plug-ins into a single feature. When installing code into Notes you actually install the features which in turn point to the plug-ins to copy to the client. You can only manage features through the Notes "code UI" (File/Application/Application Management) though you can install code into the platform by simply copying the plug-ins into the appropriate directories in the file system. This is not recommended... :-)
Update site	Update sites are used to deploy features to clients. An update site is simply a directory containing a "plugins"-directory containing a jar-file per plug-in "features"-directory containing jar-file per feature site.xml file describing which features and plug-ins (and in what versions) are available on that particular update site When an Eclipse based client contacts an update site it reads and parses the site.xml file to discover what's available there. Update Sites may be remote or local. A local update site is a directory on a local hard drive or LAN drive with the above structure or a zip-file with the above structure. An update site may also be remote and may be read using HTTP (any server will do) or it may be read using NRPC if you're using a Notes 8+ client. When using NRPC you use the Update Site Notes database template.
extension.xml	These files are used when installing code using the MyWidgets sidebar plug-in and is a shorthand for manually installing code. There is no magic at work here. When you drop an extension.xml file onto the sidebar panel the following steps are performed: The extension.xml file is parsed and verified to be a valid XML file The features to be installed are located and a dependency graph is assembled so any required features are identified The update site address specified in the extension.xml file is contacted and each missing feature in the dependency grapg is attempted installed "bottom up" The client is restarted

How to deploy widgets and/or plugins in your organization

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:19:44 GMT

Deploying widgets and/or plug-ins in your organization is very easy and there's a number of options for doing it.

Desktop policies
Widget catalog via MyWidgets
Drag'n'drop of widgets to the MyWidgets sidebar plug-in

Using a desktop policy is just a administration shorthand for using the widget catalog via MyWidgets.

The first thing you really should do, if not simply using publishing widgets created through the MyWidgets functionality, is to read up on and understand the Lotus Expeditor provisioning manifest syntax. The manifest is used to specify where the update site server is and which features and in which version to install. The manifest looks weird at first but it's actaully easy enough. Unfortunately there isn't a nice UI for creating these provisioning manifests but I head rumors in the Meet the Developers lab at Lotusphere that a UI is coming. Soon... :-)

And now for the time and frustration saver...

Absolutely make sure that you put the widget catalog in the root of the Domino server to make sure it ends up in the root of the Notes client. If you do not do this and you specify a widget catalog in the preferences the Notes client wont apply updates to the widgets when new versions are available. This is a bug at least in Notes 8.5 GOLD.

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