Getting Started
What's Java Plugin ¶
Java Plugin is one of the important plugin types among MCT, it is also part of MCT Global Agent Framework.
How does Java Plugin being triggered ¶
Test flow for all the MCT Plugins are the same: Timer -> Cloud Agent -> Polling -> Plugin, and Polling will wait till Plugin test finished then collect the results. For Java Plugin, it would consume lots of system resources if trigger a java -jar test each time, so there is a slight difference about the way how Java Plugin being executed: Polling will not trigger Java Plugin directly, but call Cloud Agent to load Plugin Jar and execute. So basically for Java Plugin, they are running on Cloud Agent's JVM. See New Java Plugin Solution for more details.
How does Cloud Agent communicate with Java Plugin ¶
As previous mentioned, Java Plugins are running on Cloud Agent, so there must be a mechanism on Agent side to load Java Plugin, the magic here is MCT Plugin Manager and Java Plugin Parent. MCT Plugin Manager is a bridge between Cloud Agent and Java Plugin, it defines certain common interfaces and provided some useful util methods for developers. Java Plugin Parent is actually a parent pom, it defines the meta data of the plugin, it helps developers integrate Java Plugin into MCT Platform easier and faster.
What are the benefits of MCT Plugin Manager and Java Plugin Parent ¶
With the help of MCT Plugin Manager and Java Plugin Parent, plugin developers could more focus on the Plugin Main Logic Developing, even a fresh engineer with few MCT knowledge could develop a qualified Java Plugin for MCT engineers, only one click on Jenkins Build Job is needed to integrate a Java Plugin into MCT.