Confluence is a great wiki system with a tremendous potential for extension through the use of plugins. I've spent a lot of time reading the various documentation about plugin development that is available on the Confluence wiki, and writing about the kinds of plugins I'd like to develop for the Bobsgear project. With the announcement of the 2nd Annual CodeGeist contest, I decided I should get busy immediately with trying to build some plugins.

Here is my diary of things I encountered from the begininning of my experience with building plugins. I hope these tips and hints may save time for other beginning Confluence plugin developers.

May 2007

• Finished the Amazon Web Services Plugin for the Codegeist 2007 contest.
• Because of poor documentation, an entire day was spent just to figure out the following two small items:
  • Figured out how to persist bandana objects
    • Encountered the dreaded Could not get field class error with xstream
  • Figured out how to make an admin configuration page for the developer key for my Amazon plugin
• Figured out how to put the plugin into the repository.
  • Putting the jar as an attachment to a confluence page might not work so well since it seems like a 302 redirection may be generated, and older Confluence like 2.3.1 may not be able to get the plugin. So I setup a separate virtual host to store my plugins.
  • Fedora Core 3, SELINUX, and Apache 2.2 make it challenging to serve binary files. SELINUX introduces a whole new set of permissions to get wrong.
• Added Version 1.0.0 of the Random Content Plugin to the repository
  • Confluence Plugin Repository check in instructions
• Updated both the metadatas to the new plugins.bobsgear.com/plugins-lib location.
• Setup file structure, and plugin repository metadata, for Content Refactoring Plugin
• Setup environment for confluence plugin development on Windows Vista
• Added Notation Guide Documentation For Plugins to amazon plugin. Rev to 1.0.3.
• Can an macro execute routine know the name of the macro that caused it to be called?

April 2007

• Confluence Development Environment Setup
• Survey of Bundled Plugin Functionality
• Trying to contribute this development diary idea as a pattern to Wiki Patterns and encountering some frustrations in doing so, which I've logged at Garnet Chaney's Wiki Patterns In Progress. The site uses an interesting custom theme, but I think the custom theme points out some of the dangers in building a custom theme: They have forgotten to include important elements such as: No edit button for personal home pages (although some other people did figure out how to edit their home page); no browse space link for the personal spaces; no recent changes. I posted these most important frustrations in a comment here.

  Matrioshka Bugs (A bug within a bug within a bug...) Matrioshka Bugs - Excerpt An old saying I learned in search and rescue work is: You can't be part of the solution if you become part of the problem In other words, be careful when you are trying to help. If a policeman is speeding too fast around a corner while he is racing with his lights and siren blaring, and ends up getting in an accident and disables his car, he's become a problem. When I have done radio operations at a search and rescue base, I had to keep track of the whereabouts of all the different search groups. The thing I feared most was losing contact with one of the search groups, and having to inform my commander that we needed to start a search within a search. When these kinds of things happen, they are almost always the result of lack of preparation or carelessness. So when I am on the track of one bug or problem, nothing aggravates me more than discovering some problem in another tool I am trying to use to solve the first problem, or worse yet, a third problem while I still haven't dealt with the first two. This situation of finding bugs within bugs reminds me of those Russian Nesting Dolls, or Matrioshka Dolls. I call this situation "Matrioshka Bugs". Read the rest of the story about Matrioshka Bugs...

• Finish article on how to debug and fix the Confluence Example Plugin - Amazon Web Services Plugin
• Look at Confluence Example Plugin - Confluencerpc to try to understand how to create new pages from within a plugin (not yet successful)
• Initial analysis of the features used in Confluence Example Plugin - randompage
• Trying to get some clarification about the license. Atlassian Director of Developer Relations says that Confluence license doesn't allow wiki farms, (due to a difficult to read clause that prohibits bundling your copy of Confluence with other stuff you are selling to someone.) But Atlassian sales rep Roy, when presented with the "paid memberships in a private money making tutorial wiki space" usage pattern, said there was no problem with this, users can be used however the licensee wants (exactly what I think the license clearly says.) So who is right? I've been trying for days to get a definitive answer, but this is taking a lot of time due to the time difference between San Francisco and Australia, the director of sales taking a long holiday, and an offsite meeting entirely closing the San Francisco office. See my usage patterns here: Sample Usage Scenario of A Small Web Hosting Company's First Confluence License
• Further work on Survey of Bundled Plugin Functionality, bullet points of major functionality in each macro.