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Developing Plug-ins Without Affecting the Core

This guide explains how to develop plug-ins separately from the iDempiere core, ensuring clean separation between your customizations and the official core codebase. This approach is ideal for:

  • Building plug-ins for personal, educational, or testing purposes
  • Implementing customer-specific extensions without modifying core code
  • Enabling clean merges of iDempiere updates without interference from plug-in code

🧰 Prerequisites​

Before you begin, ensure you have:

  • A working iDempiere development environment set up in Eclipse.
  • Version control configured.
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Instead of starting from scratch, you might want to use the scaffolding tool from iDempiere Plugin Scaffold instead. This tool provides a pre-configured structure to help you quickly set up your plug-in project, saving time and effort.

📚 Recommended Workflow​

  1. In Eclipse, go to:

    File → New → Other… → Plug-in Project

  2. Provide a custom project name (e.g., com.yourcompany.pluginname).

  3. Uncheck “Use default location” and choose a custom folder outside the iDempiere core repository, such as:

    idempiere-plugins/your-plugin-name

  4. Set the plug-in target platform to Equinox and click Next

  5. Choose a compatible Java execution environment (e.g., JavaSE-17 or later).

  6. Disable options like "Generate an activator".

  7. Once created, connect the project to version control:

    Right-click the project → Team → Share Project

    Create or select a Git repository in your plugin directory.

tip

Instead of creating a Git repository for each of your plug-ins and fragments, you can also follow this approach:

  • Create a directory on your hard drive to contain all your plug-ins and fragments.
  • Initialize a single Git repository in this directory.
  • Place all newly created plug-ins and fragments in this repository directory, skipping the step of creating separate repositories for each.
  • This way, you maintain one consolidated repository containing all your files.

By following these tips, your plug-in development process becomes more streamlined and easier to manage.