Lesson 5.4: Plugin lifecycle

Difficulty: Intermediate | Duration: 10 min | Prerequisites: Lesson 5.1

Overview

Plugins aren't fire-and-forget. Bowire can load, unload, restart, reset-storage and health-check a plugin at runtime — without restarting the whole workbench. This matters while authoring (iterate on a plugin without a full reboot) and in operations (isolate a misbehaving plugin).

The lifecycle operations

Operation What it does
Load Bring an installed-but-inactive plugin into the running workbench.
Unload Remove a plugin from the running process (frees its discovery + handlers).
Restart Unload + load — pick up a rebuilt assembly / sidecar without a workbench reboot.
Reset storage Clear a plugin's persisted state back to a clean slate.
Health The plugin's health signal, surfaced as a sidebar badge and via the plugin API.

Steps

1. Manage from the workbench

Settings → Plugins lists installed plugins with their health badge and the Load / Unload / Restart / Reset-storage controls. Restart after a dotnet pack + reinstall to pick up your latest build without losing your workbench session.

2. Manage from the CLI

bowire plugin list / install / uninstall / update / inspect cover the install-time lifecycle; startup gating uses --disable-plugin <id> (Unit 3.6) to skip a plugin whose load fails or whose discovery probe is too slow.

3. Author loop

While building a plugin: dotnet pack → reinstall → Restart the plugin in Settings → re-discover. No full workbench reboot, so your open tabs and workspace survive the iteration.

Key Takeaways

  1. Load / unload / restart / reset-storage / health — full runtime control, no workbench reboot.
  2. Restart is the author's iterate loop after a rebuild.
  3. --disable-plugin is the operator's safety valve for a plugin that won't load.

What's Next

That closes the Extend unit — and the last of the modality units. Round it off with your course's capstone (user · developer · administrator), each of which extends the Harbor domain.

Reference