Introducing the Unofficial Atlassian Data Center Plugin Development CLI

[Remie Bolte]

After having spent a lot of time creating all sorts of custom Docker files with bash scripts and illusive docker compose configurations, we finally found the time to string them all together and wrap them into the Unofficial Atlassian Data Center Plugin Development CLI

Speed up your local Data Center development flow

Simply install the CLI globally using npm install -g dcdx and quickly run your favourite Atlassian application:

$ dcdx run:jira

This will spin up a Jira instance with a 72H development license pre-installed and a PostgreSQL database. If you want to use a different database, for instance MySQL , just run dcdx run jira -d mysql. The Docker files are build from source, meaning that they will also work natively on Apple Silicon.

The following Atlassian Data Center products are supported:

• Jira
• Confluence
• Bamboo
• Bitbucket

It includes local versions of one of the following supported databases:

• PostgreSQL (default)
• MySQL
• Microsoft SQL Server

How does this compare to the Atlassian SDK?

Glad you asked! I want to be absolutely clear that this is in no way endorsed by Atlassian, nor is it meant to replace the Atlassian SDK or AMPS. You can still use the official methods for developming Data Center apps.

However, we’ve found that for us the official SDK is not sufficient. It has not received many updates and has become sluggish. In addition, the default embedded H2 database is marked deprecated and support will be dropped in future versions of Atlassian products. Many host products also do not run well on Apple Silicon when started using the Atlassian SDK.

In short: the purpose of the DCDX CLI is not to replace the Atlassian SDK, but provide convenience methods for app developers in the hope that it will speed up their development flow.

More info
You can find more info on the CLI on NPM:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/dcdx

The project is open source and contributions are welcome!

Source can be found in Github:

http://github.com/collabsoft-net/dcdx

[Marty Henderson]

Remie, this is awesome. Thank you for putting the effort in and getting this out there for those who are still building DC plugins. Very keen to contribute and work with you on this one!

[Bill Sim]

Sweet! This should be very useful. Thanks!

[Remie Bolte]

BTW, this is not only useful for plugin development. You can also use it to start a fresh Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket or Bamboo instance for testing, demos, and other purposes.