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Development environment

Prerequisites​

  • .NET 10 SDK — every plugin csproj targets net10.0 (<TargetFramework>net10.0</TargetFramework>).
  • EF Core CLI tools (dotnet-ef) — for plugins with a DbContext (Schulware, OdaOrg). Install/update with dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef (or dotnet tool update). See migrations.md.
  • Kiota — only needed to regenerate the Schulware API client. See setup/kiota-client.md.
  • A running SchulyBackend with PostgreSQL to load and test a plugin end-to-end.

The abstractions dependency​

Schuly.Plugin.Abstractions is a NuGet PackageReference, not a project reference:

<PackageReference Include="Schuly.Plugin.Abstractions" Version="0.2.*" />

It supplies ISchulyPlugin, IPluginBackgroundTask, IPluginUserContext, IPluginLogin, and PluginServiceContext. Backend-provided types such as IPluginVault (Schuly.Infrastructure.Vault) are resolved at runtime from the host's DI container — the host registers each plugin's isolated vault keyed by the plugin's Name.

How a plugin is structured​

A plugin is a class library exposing one ISchulyPlugin implementation (the composition root, slim like an ASP.NET Program.cs). The richer plugins keep HTTP routes in Controllers/ (discovered as an MVC ApplicationPart) rather than mapping them in ConfigureEndpoints, and split sync logic across small scoped services driven by a single IPluginBackgroundTask.

See adding-a-plugin.md for the full lifecycle.

Building a plugin​

# Restore + build a single plugin
dotnet build src/Schuly.Plugin.Schulware/Schuly.Plugin.Schulware.csproj -c Release

# Produce the loadable output (DLL + non-host dependencies) — same command CI uses
dotnet publish src/Schuly.Plugin.Schulware/Schuly.Plugin.Schulware.csproj -c Release -o ./out

Each plugin also has a .slnx solution file for opening it standalone in an IDE.

Running a plugin against a live backend​

The backend's plugin host loads plugin DLLs from its plugins/ directory (/app/plugins/ in the container) and reads each plugin's YAML config from its plugins-config directory.

  1. Bring up SchulyBackend + Postgres (see the backend's README).
  2. dotnet publish the plugin (above) and copy the plugin DLL plus its third-party dependency DLLs into the backend's plugins/ folder. Host-shared assemblies (ASP.NET Core, EF Core, Npgsql, the abstractions, Schuly host assemblies) are already provided by the backend — only true third-party deps (e.g. Kiota, AngleSharp) need to ship alongside the plugin.
  3. Drop the plugin's runtime config as Schuly.Plugin.<Name>.yml into the backend's plugins-config directory. For Schulware this must contain at least SchulwareApi.BaseUrl — ConfigureServices throws and refuses to load otherwise (see src/Schuly.Plugin.Schulware/config.yml for the schema).
  4. Restart the backend. On startup the host calls ConfigureServices → ConfigureEndpoints → MigrateAsync (which runs db.Database.MigrateAsync() to create/upgrade the plugin's dedicated Postgres database), then schedules any IPluginBackgroundTask on its Interval.

For real distribution (downloading prebuilt DLLs via curl) see setup/distribution.md.