Setting up your development environment

Before you follow the development tutorials for creating a Zowe CLI plug-in, follow these steps to set up your environment.

Prequisites

Install Zowe CLI.

Initial setup

To create your development space, you will clone and build zowe-cli-sample-plugin from source.

Before you clone the repository, create a local development folder named zowe-tutorial. You will clone and build all projects in this folder.

Clone zowe-cli-sample-plugin and build from source

Clone the repository into your development folder to match the following structure:

zowe-tutorial

└── zowe-cli-sample-plugin

Follow these steps:

1. cd to your zowe-tutorial folder.

2. git clone https://github.com/zowe/zowe-cli-sample-plugin

3. cd to your zowe-cli-sample-plugin folder.

4. npm install

5. npm run build

   The first time that you build, the script will interactively ask you for the location of your Zowe CLI directory. Subsequent builds will not ask again.

   The build script creates symbolic links. On Windows, you might need to have Administrator privileges to create those symbolic links.

(Optional) Run the automated tests

We recommend running automated tests on all code changes. Follow these steps:

1. cd to the __tests__/__resources__/properties folder.
2. Copy example_properties.yaml to custom_properties.yaml.
3. Edit the properties within custom_properties.yaml to contain valid system information for your site.
4. cd to your zowe-cli-sample-plugin folder
5. npm run test

Next steps

After you complete your setup, follow the Installing the sample plug-in tutorial to install this sample plug-in to Zowe CLI.