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Publish our plugin

Now we are going to publish our plugin so that anybody may use it.

Let's open our plugin project once again:

cd ~/pact-plugin-template-golang

Configure Git​

You have probably already configured git on your command line.

If not, check the instructions on the GitHub site

Create a fine grained personal access token​

head to https://github.com/settings/personal-access-tokens/new

  • Give it a name and description (e.g. Pact Plugin tutorial)
  • Set expiration to something short (like 7 days)
  • Choose "only select repositories" and select your plugin project
  • Under "repository permissions" choose read and write for "Contents"
  • Choose "generate token" and copy the value

Commit the changes​

Add the files and commit the changes:

git add .
git commit -m 'feat: initial foobar plugin'
git push origin master

NOTE: you will need to use your personal access token as the password in this step

To release, we simply need to:

  • Bump the VERSION in the Makefile. It's currently set to 0.0.1 which is appropriate.
  • Tag the project git tag -a v0.0.1 -m "Initial release"
  • Push the tag git push origin v0.0.1

That's it! There is a release.yml in the github workflows directory that will automatically build and publish the artifact to GitHub.

Check the release step​

Head over to your GitHub Actions build page for your repo (https://github.com/YOUR_ORG/pact-foobar-plugin/actions). You should see the release job is running (it should take about 3-4 mins to execute).

Once it's completed, it will create a number of release artifacts that are ready to be downloaded by your users!

In fact, they are prepared in a way that can also be installed through the Plugin CLI. Let's download the CLI and install it that way:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pact-foundation/pact-plugins/main/scripts/install-plugin-cli.sh | bash

Install your plugin, using the CLI, customised to your git repo:

/root/bin/pact-plugin-cli install -y https://github.com/YOUR_ORG/pact-foobar-plugin/releases/tag/v0.0.1

Check if it's installed:

/root/bin/pact-plugin-cli list

You can now head back to your JS tests and try running again to see if it works:

cd ~/example-project-js-foobar-plugin
npm t
...
Verifying a pact between myconsumer and myprovider

  an HTTP request to /foobar
     Given the Foobar protocol exists
    returns a response which
      has status code 200 (OK)
      includes headers
        "content-type" with value "application/foo" (OK)
      has a matching body (OK)

WOOT! 🎉