Example plug-in#

A plug-in consists of one or more steps. A step represents a unit of functionality that can be user-configured and combined with other steps into a process. Creating a plug-in consists in defining its individual steps and then grouping them together for presentation in HCL™ Launch.

Plug-in steps are run by an agent that is installed in the target environment. This means that plug-ins can be written in any scripting language as long as the agent can access the required scripting tools on the host.

In this section, we examine the mechanics of plug-ins by examining a plug-in step in detail. The example plug-in that we use is FileUtils, which contains several steps that are related to file manipulation. The FileUtils plug-in is shipped with HCL Launch.

Each plug-in step is an individually configurable object in the editor. In the following illustration, you can see some of FileUtils' individual steps in the process editor.

An illustration of the steps in the code of the plug-in and the matching steps in the process editor

We examine the Create File step in this example. Create File is straightforward and (as the name implies) creates a file.

Each step (step-type element) has the same structure:

The following figure illustrates the structure of the Create File step.

The structure of the step shows the properties of the step, which correspond to the properties in the Edit Properties window

Parent topic: Plug-ins