Documentation / Topics / Repositories / Backstage plugins

Backstage plugins repositories

Backstage plugins repositories are expected to be hosted in GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket repos. When adding your repository to Artifact Hub, the url used must follow the following format:

  • https://github.com/user/repo[/path/to/packages]
  • https://gitlab.com/user/repo[/path/to/packages]
  • https://bitbucket.org/user/repo[/path/to/packages]

By default the master branch is used, but it’s possible to specify a different one from the UI.

Please NOTE that the repository URL used when adding the repository to Artifact Hub must NOT contain the git hosting platform specific parts, like tree/branch, just the path to your packages like it would show in the filesystem.

The path/to/packages provided can contain metadata for one or more packages. Each package version must be on a separate folder, and it’s up to you to decide if you want to publish one or multiple versions of your package.

The structure of a repository with multiple plugins packages and versions could look something like this:

$ tree path/to/packages
path/to/packages
├── artifacthub-repo.yml
├── package1
│   ├── 1.0.0
│   │   ├── README.md
│   │   └── artifacthub-pkg.yml
│   └── 2.0.0
│       ├── README.md
│       └── artifacthub-pkg.yml
└── package2
    └── 1.0.0
        ├── README.md
        └── artifacthub-pkg.yml

This structure is flexible, and in some cases it can be greatly simplified. In the case of a single package with a single version available at a time (the publisher doesn’t want to make previous ones available, for example), the structure could look like this:

$ tree path/to/packages
path/to/packages
├── artifacthub-repo.yml
└── package1
    ├── README.md
    └── artifacthub-pkg.yml

In the previous case, even the package1 directory could be omitted. The reason is that both packages names and versions are read from the artifacthub-pkg.yml metadata file, so directories names are not used at all.

Each package version needs an artifacthub-pkg.yml metadata file. Please see the file spec for more details. The artifacthub-repo.yml repository metadata file shown above can be used to setup features like Verified publisher or Ownership claim. This file must be located at /path/to/packages.

Once you have added your repository, you are all set up. As you add new versions of your plugins packages or even new packages to your git repository, they’ll be automatically indexed and listed in Artifact Hub.