Not possible to deploy Theia plugins with sidecar container

Describe the bug

I am trying to deploy a custom Theia plugin on a Che workspace. The plugin is intended to execute a task on the hosting system to generate some code. So it will ask the user for some input parameters (a REST service specification file, and a destination folder in which to generate the output), then create a system task and pass to it the parameters for execution. The plugin has an external dependency on java, and according to the documentation I should define a sidecar container providing the external dependencies needed. However, when I add the containers part in the yaml, the Che workspace loads the sidecar container but ignores completely the Theia plugin.

Che version

other (please specify in additional context)

Steps to reproduce

Start a workspace from this devfile (the failing plugin is perftestgen_plugin, second from the end):

apiVersion: 1.0.0
metadata:
  name: david-custom-theia-imagef6hsw
projects:
  - name: smartclide-devfiles
    source:
      location: 'https://github.com/eclipse-researchlabs/smartclide-devfiles.git'
      type: git
      branch: v0.0.9
components:
  - id: redhat/vscode-yaml/latest
    type: chePlugin
  - type: chePlugin
    reference: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eclipse-researchlabs/smartclide-devfiles/test/plugins_meta.yaml'
  - type: chePlugin
    reference: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eclipse-researchlabs/smartclide-devfiles/test/perfTestGen-plugin.yaml'
    alias: perftestgen_plugin
  - type: cheEditor
    reference: 'https://github.com/eclipse-researchlabs/smartclide-devfiles/raw/4bd4a0dc7a40665086c92ca5fcebd086f5e39009/editor_meta.yaml'

The plugin’s meta.yaml is as follows:

apiVersion: v2
publisher: Kairos Digital Solutions
name: smartclide-perftest-plugin
version: 0.0.3-rc6
type: Theia plugin
displayName: SmartCLIDE Performance Tests Generator
title: SmartCLIDE Performance Tests Generator Plugin
description: Che Plug-in to generate performance tests for a given OpenAPI endpoint spec.
icon: https://www.eclipse.org/che/images/logo-eclipseche.svg
repository: https://github.com/eclipse-researchlabs/smartclide-perftestgen-theia
firstPublicationDate: "2021-04-27"
category: Other
spec:
  containers:
    - image: quay.io/eclipse/che-java11-maven:7.32.1  
  extensions:
    - https://github.com/eclipse-researchlabs/smartclide-perftestgen-theia/releases/download/v0.0.3-rc6/smartclide_perftestgen_theia.theia

Expected behavior

Start of sidecar container and front-end plugin at the same time. Communication between them

Runtime

Kubernetes (vanilla)

Screenshots

No response

Installation method

other (please specify in additional context)

Environment

Amazon

Eclipse Che Logs

No response

Additional context

No response

[l0rd]

The plugin intention is to collect required user data (like where to generate the output) before executing the action. Can this be done through devfile commands?

You can use read -p in a command like in this example. This is a command line prompt though. But it does the job.

[azatsarynnyy]

when executing my plugin, I am now getting an error saying Task has exited with code 127.

@davidgarcia-kairosds Most likely, it’s because the task is executed in the main theia container, but not in the sidecar. You can specify a sidecar in the command definition in your Devfile. See the examples here. Note, the component propery corresponds to the component’s alias.