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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! 🎉