Solr’s New Package Manager for Plugins

Presented at virtual Activate 2020. Solr 8.4 has a new package management system for plugins that portends of a better future that is much improved from today: (a) load plugins at runtime, (b) find 3rd party plugins in a registry, (c) fetch, install, and even configure plugins from the command line (CLI), (d) a more slimmed down Solr distribution that is more secure. After an overview, you will see this system demonstrated, after which you should feel comfortable in trying it out for yourself when you leave. Beyond the CLI demonstration, we’ll look behind the covers a bit to show some of how it works. We’ll finish with a discussion of the gaps and thus what the future hopefully holds as this new mechanism blossoms. You’ll learn a bit about what it takes to “package” up your plugins too.

Speaker:
David Smiley, Software Engineer, Principal, Salesforce

Intended Audience:
Any attendee should be able to grasp the fairly high-level material.

Attendee Takeaway:
All Solr users will need to know about this system and use it. Some plugins you use today may move out of Solr, and this is a good thing!