I've been trying to review other posts (along with the VMware documentation) regarding installing/registering plugins on [customer's] production servers. Specifically, I was looking at this recent posting:
https://communities.vmware.com/message/2292717
The following response was a really good point, but I was looking for a little more detail on how other developers are doing this install/registration:
laurentsd: As plugin developer you are responsible for writing an installer program that customers will run to register your plugin-package. You don't want them to deal with running a java program directly :-) The installer should be user-friendly.
I was curious as to how most people are having their customers install a Web Client plugin.
The SDK-Tutorial.html doc states in the "Registering your plugin... " section that for production mode (step 1) you would:
use a script or installer program to create the Extension data object programatically, and register that data object using the ExtensionManager.registerExtension method
This implies that the .zip file needs to be placed on an accessible server with HTTPS access.
[Option 1]: Are most people having the customer put the .zip file in an HTTPS server in the customer's own environment? If so, then I'd assume that the installer asks the user to specify the URL for the zip file, which then gets rolled into the "Extension data object programatically".
[Option 2]: Or, are most people hosting their own .zip file on their own HTTPS server, using an installer with hard-coded URL value to the .zip file, and having the user simply launch the installer without entering any extra data?
Or perhaps there is an [Option 3] that I haven't thought of yet?
It seems like [Option 2] is of course easiest for the customer, but makes it more challenging to charge money for a plugin which everyone has access to. [Option 1] requires a little bit of work for the customer, but allows the developer to limit access to the plugin to customers who have actually paid for the product. Granted the installer can block based on license key, but anyone with some knowledge of vSphere Web Client plugins along with the "Register your plugin package" documentation could take a plugin .zip file and manually install it without an official installer (when the .zip is publicly hosted).