UrbanCode Plugins – Where Do I Begin?

As a manager of a highly technical team, it can be tough to stay on top of everything that happens within my team.  Recently I have been seeing an increasing number of requests for UrbanCode Plugins, those nifty little add-ons that make UrbanCode extensible and much easier to use.  Now you can go and grab an already existing plugin from the UrbanCode Plugins site, because that site has about 336 of them (I just looked at the list today – by the time you read this the number will have changed).  The point is, there are a lot of existing plugins out there already.  Note that some of these are “community” plugins, meaning that they are community supported.

But what should you do if you need a plugin that has not already been developed?  Well…. you should go and create a plugin for yourself.  Where should you start?  One of my team members (Darrell Schrag – check out his blog, DevOps for Everyone) created an UrbanCode Deploy and UrbanCode Release Plugin workshop recently.  I knew about it, but never realized how much it could help our UrbanCode customers.  My mistake – this stuff is good!

It is part of the IBM UrbanCode Learning Circle, which is a great way to get yourself up to speed with UrbanCode.  It provides a roadmap for how you can become a self-taught DevOps guru (or at least proficient with the UrbanCode Deploy and UrbanCode Release tools).  The lab workbook is 150 pages of hands-on training, exposing you to all of the different facets of building your own UrbanCode plugin.  I know that 150 pages sounds like a lot, but you should be able to invest an afternoon and learn what you need to know about creating your own UrbanCode plugin.

If you still have questions, you can always go out to the UrbanCode Forum and ask the community for answers.  The forum is monitored by the IBM development and support teams, as well as by other UrbanCode users.  Just use the tags “urbancode” and “plugin” on your post, to make sure that the right people see your questions.  The key thing to remember is that you are not alone – there are plenty of other people who are trying to do similar things to what you want to do.  If you’re lucky, maybe there is someone who has already developed what you want.