Code Climate Plugin Lifecycle

Code Climate plugins go through the following stages:

In Development - the plugin is in local development and QA
Beta - the plugin is selectively available on codeclimate.com, and in final QA
Generally Available - the plugin is available on codeclimate.com, and in the Code Climate CLI.

In development

Once you have started working on a Code Climate plugin, your first milestone toward getting it out into the world is completing the following steps to get it to Beta. During this process you’ll create your tool, connect with the community of developers building on top of the Code Climate platform, and become intimately familiar with the inner workings of a plugin.

Getting from In Development to Beta

Join the Code Climate Developer Program
Read the Plugin Specification
Begin development on your plugin - our Introductory Blog Post and Documentation are great places to start
Copy the Plugin QA spreadsheet
QA your plugin with the CLI, completing the engine.json, Dockerfile, Docker Image, CLI Behavior, and Plugin Output sections
Submit your engine via the Plugin Submission Form
Submit updates to the plugin to the Code Climate Plugin Update form

Beta

At this point you have a plugin which runs locally with the Code Climate CLI, passes the relevant QA steps, and can successfully produce results on 10 Open Source repositories on GitHub. You have completed Quality Assurance and are confident that other people will be able to run your plugin against their code.

Code Climate will now begin internal QA of your plugin. The QA process involves making sure that the plugin is well-behaved in our codeclimate.com cluster, has high quality content associated with issues, and more. Once this QA is complete, we will be able to make your plugin selectively available on codeclimate.com for you to test on some repositories.

Getting from Beta to Generally Available

Test your plugin on codeclimate.com with the Plugin QA spreadsheet, completing the .com behavior section
Provide documentation for codeclimate.com - use the template at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tsIoZz3VBdjg8z6EycA66wFDKVch__4n94GhEooziqU/edit (see https://github.com/sleekbyte/codeclimate-tailor/wiki for an example)
Provide an author image, plugin logo, and description for the Code Climate engines page (see the plugin list for the type of content we need)
Submit updates to the plugin to the Code Climate Plugin Update form

Generally Available

Once QA is complete on codeclimate.com and the documentation ready, it’s time to make the plugin generally available! The answer to “When can my plugin get released?” is somewhat dependent on internal activity at Code Climate, but we will do our best to release your plugin in a timely manner. Check the status in the plugin portal for updates, and email or Slack us if you have any questions.

The next step will be announcing your plugin, which you can do yourself any time after the plugin has been published on our Plugins page.

On our side, we’ll publish your information on our plugins page, mention it in our Changelog, and include it in our roundups of plugin activity!

Any Code Climate user can now use your plugin via the CLI, codeclimate.com, or Code Climate Enterprise
Submit updates to the plugin to the Code Climate Plugin Update form