At this point, you have set up your environment and run a test with a standalone version of JIRA. In this section, you learn how to create a plugin module. For now, you are just going to use the command line tools. Later, you‘ll learn how to run the tools from an IDE. This page contains the following sections:

Step 1: Create your first project

If you haven‘t already done so, go ahead and open a terminal window and then do the following:

1. Change directory to the atlastutorial folder you created earlier at the root of your home directory.

2. Once you are in the folder, enter the atlas-create-jira-plugin command to create the plugin.

    

    

    

    

    

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   atlas-create-jira-plugin

    

    

   The command prompts you for the JIRA version.

3. Enter 1 for JIRA 5 and press RETURN.
   The command prompts you for the basic information each plugin needs.

4. Respond to the prompts using the information in the following table:

   Define value for groupId	com.atlassian.tutorial
   Define value for artifactId	helloworld
   Define value for version	1.0-SNAPSHOT
   Define value for package	com.atlassian.tutorial.helloworld

   The system prompts you to confirm the configuration you entered:

    

    

    

    

    

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   Confirm properties configuration:

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   groupId: com.atlassian.tutorial

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   artifactId: helloworld

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   version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT

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   package: com.atlassian.tutorial.helloworld

    

    
5. Press y to continue.
   The system creates a helloworld project folder. This initial project folder contains the basic skeleton of a plugin.

Step 2: Examine the contents of the plugin skeleton

With a single command, you have a skeleton plugin project containing the following source:

Take a closer look at the code created for you in the src directory. The src/test/java contains a generated class and some placeholders for testing your plugin. You‘ll learn more about this later. The src/main folder contains an initial/com/atlassian/tutorial/helloworld/MyPluginComponent.java file and a/com/atlassian/tutorial/helloworld/MyPluginComponentImpl.java.   The src/main/resources folder contains a singleatlassian-plugin.xml file — this file is the descriptor. It defines the plugin modules your plugin uses.

At this point, your descriptor file should not define any modules. Let‘s test this, by looking in the descriptor file:

1. Open your favorite text editor.

2. Browse to and open the atlastutorial/helloworld/src/main/resources/atlassian-plugin.xml file.
   At this point the contents of the file should look like this:

    

    

    

    

    

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   <atlassian-plugin key="${project.groupId}.${project.artifactId}" name="${project.name}" plugins-version="2">

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       <plugin-info>

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           <description>${project.description}</description>

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           <version>${project.version}</version>

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           <vendor name="${project.organization.name}" url="${project.organization.url}" />

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           <param name="plugin-icon">images/pluginIcon.png</param>

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           <param name="plugin-logo">images/pluginLogo.png</param>

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       </plugin-info>

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       <!-- add our i18n resource -->

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       <resource type="i18n" name="i18n" location="helloworld"/>

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       <!-- add our web resources -->

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       <web-resource key="helloworld-resources" name="helloworld Web Resources">

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           <dependency>com.atlassian.auiplugin:ajs</dependency>

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           <resource type="download" name="helloworld.css" location="/css/helloworld.css"/>

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           <resource type="download" name="helloworld.js" location="/js/helloworld.js"/>

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           <resource type="download" name="images/" location="/images"/>

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           <context>helloworld</context>

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       </web-resource>

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       <!-- publish our component -->

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       <component key="myPluginComponent" class="com.atlassian.tutorial.helloworld.MyPluginComponentImpl" public="true">

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           <interface>com.atlassian.tutorial.helloworld.MyPluginComponent</interface>

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       </component>

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       <!-- import from the product container -->

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       <component-import key="applicationProperties" interface="com.atlassian.sal.api.ApplicationProperties" />

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   </atlassian-plugin>

    

    

   Several of the entries in the <plugin-info> should look familiar. If you recall, the atlas-create-jira-plugin command asked you for agroupId and an artifactId. These values landed in another file all together.
   
   Your plugin includes resources that allow you to control look and feel. These appear under the web resources section. You‘ll learn more about these in another tutorial. For now, focus on the relatively simple <plugin-info> section. 

3. Close the atlassian-plugin.xml file.
4. Open the atlastutorial/helloworld/pom.xml.
   This file is a Maven project object model file. This file contains project and dependency information that Maven uses to build your plugin. This tutorial isn‘t going into the finer points of Maven or its files.
5. Search for the artifactId value.
   You should find the artifactId you entered when you created the skeleton. The project.artifactId you saw in the atlassian-plugin.xml file references this value.
6. Familiarize yourself with the file a bit by looking for other values you entered through the command such as the groupId and version.
7. Close the file when you are done.

Step 3: Load the helloworld plugin into JIRA

Even though you haven‘t written any code, you can still load the skeleton plugin into JIRA. When you load a plugin into JIRA, it is visible in the Universal Plugin Manager (UPM). The UPM is in every Atlassian application. It allows you to install, view, and update plugins in your host application. The host application in this case is JIRA. You load a plugin using the atlas-run command. Try this command and see what happens:

1. Open a command line (DOS prompt for Windows users).

2. Change directory to the root of your plugin project.

    

    

    

    

    

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   cd atlastutorial/helloworld

    

    

3. Enter the atlas-run command.
   The command creates a target sub directory under your project root. You will examine this directory a bit more later. When the command completes successfully, you‘ll see some output that looks very similar to the output of the atlas-run-standalone command.

    

    

    

    

    

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   [WARNING] [talledLocalContainer] INFO: Deploying web application archive cargocpc.war

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   [WARNING] [talledLocalContainer] May 9, 2012 8:15:56 AM org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol star

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   t

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   [WARNING] [talledLocalContainer] INFO: Starting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on http-2990

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   [WARNING] [talledLocalContainer] May 9, 2012 8:15:56 AM org.apache.jk.common.ChannelSocket init

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   [WARNING] [talledLocalContainer] INFO: JK: ajp13 listening on /0.0.0.0:8009

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   [WARNING] [talledLocalContainer] May 9, 2012 8:15:56 AM org.apache.jk.server.JkMain start

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   [WARNING] [talledLocalContainer] INFO: Jk running ID=0 time=0/130  config=null

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   [WARNING] [talledLocalContainer] May 9, 2012 8:15:56 AM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina start

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   [WARNING] [talledLocalContainer] INFO: Server startup in 100008 ms

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   [INFO] [talledLocalContainer] 2012-05-09 08:15:59,176 QuartzWorker-0 INFO ServiceRunner    Backup Se

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   rvice [jira.bc.dataimport.DefaultExportService] Data export completed in 781ms. Wrote 622 entities t

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   o export in memory.

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   [INFO] [talledLocalContainer] 2012-05-09 08:15:59,186 QuartzWorker-0 INFO ServiceRunner    Backup Se

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   rvice [jira.bc.dataimport.DefaultExportService] Attempting to save the Active Objects Backup

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   [INFO] [talledLocalContainer] 2012-05-09 08:15:59,487 QuartzWorker-0 INFO ServiceRunner    Backup Se

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   rvice [jira.bc.dataimport.DefaultExportService] Finished saving the Active Objects Backup

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   [INFO] [talledLocalContainer] Tomcat 6.x started on port [2990]

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   [INFO] jira started successfully in 161s at http://manthony-PC:2990/jira

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   [INFO] Type Ctrl-D to shutdown gracefully

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   [INFO] Type Ctrl-C to exit

    

    
4. Open your browser and log into the JIRA instance.
   (Remember, the username and password are both admin.)
5. Select the  cog (Administration) icon in the right corner.
6. Choose Add-ons from the menu.
   The system places you on the Administration page.
7. Choose Manage Add-ons from the left-hand menu.
   The system opens the Manage Add-ons page.
8. Locate the helloworld plugin listings in User-installed Add-ons category.
   You‘ll find two listings for your plugin. One for the plugin itself and one for the plugin tests.  
9. Expand each entry by click it.
   You should see the following for the plugin alone:
   
   The plugin has just the basic modules that you get for "free" when you create a plugin.  These modules don‘t do much yet.
10. Close the JIRA browser window.
11. Return to the terminal window where you started atlas-run and shutdown the process with CTRL-D.

Step 4: Make a change and see it reflected in the application

In this step, you‘ll make a small change in your plugin‘s pom.xml file. Then, you‘ll rebuild your plugin with the atlas-run command.

1. Open the pom.xml file in your favorite editor.

2. Locate the <organization>element.

3. Update the element to look like the following:

    

    

    

    

    

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   <organization>

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       <name>HelloGoodby Inc.</name>

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       <url>http://www.helloworldgoodbye.com/</url>

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   </organization>

    

    
4. Save and close the file.
5. Run the atlas-run command in the terminal window.
6. Open the plugins page in your browser using the following path http://localhost:2990/jira/plugins/servlet/upm#manage.
   JIRA still prompts you for the username/password.
7. Expand the helloworld plugin to see your changes.

The Next Steps

So far, you‘ve used the SDK from a command line. However, most programmers working in complex code prefer the help of an integrated development environment (IDE). One of the most popular IDE is Eclipse. In the next section, you install and configure the Eclipse IDE on Windows orfor Linux/Mac. If you are using IntelliJ, please see this page.