Publishing Your Plugin

To make your plugin discoverable in Aloha Desktop, you need to:

1. Publish a release on GitHub
2. Add your plugin to the aloha-releases registry

Step 1: Publish GitHub Release

Automatic Publishing (Recommended)

The vite-aloha template includes a GitHub Actions workflow that automatically creates releases when you push a new version tag.

Enable Workflow Permissions

First, configure your repository to allow the workflow to create releases:

1. Go to your repository Settings
2. Navigate to Actions → General
3. Scroll to Workflow permissions
4. Select: Read and write permissions
5. Click Save

Create a Release

# Update version in package.json (e.g., to 1.0.0)
npm version 1.0.0

# This creates a commit and tag automatically
# Push both the commit and tag
git push origin main
git push origin v1.0.0

The GitHub Actions workflow will automatically:

• ✅ Build your plugin
• ✅ Create a plugin.tgz archive containing the dist folder
• ✅ Create a GitHub release with both manifest.json and plugin.tgz
• ✅ Attach the required assets to the release

TIP

The workflow is triggered by tags matching the pattern v*.*.* (e.g., v1.0.0, v2.1.3)

Manual Publishing

If you prefer to publish manually or use a different CI/CD provider to release a new version:

1. Build Your Plugin

npm run build

2. Create Plugin Archive

For plugins bundled with vite-aloha:

# Create tarball from dist folder
tar czf plugin.tgz dist

For non-bundled plugins:

# Create tarball with src and public folders
tar czf plugin.tgz src public

3. Create GitHub Release

1. Go to your repository on GitHub
2. Click Releases → Create a new release
3. Create a new tag (e.g., v1.0.0)
4. Fill in release title and description
5. Upload two files:
   • manifest.json
   • plugin.tgz
6. Click Publish release

Step 2: Add to aloha-releases Registry

Once you have a published GitHub release with the required assets, register your plugin in the marketplace.

TIP

You only need to submit the plugin to the registry once. After your plugin is published, users can download and update to new releases directly from the app.

Submit to Registry

1. Visit the aloha-desktop repository
2. Click on plugins.json
3. Click the Edit button (pencil icon)
4. Add your plugin entry to the JSON array:

[
  ...existing plugins...,
  {
    "repo": "yourusername/aloha-your-plugin",
    "name": "Your Plugin Display Name",
    "author": "Your Name",
    "description": "Short description of what your plugin does",
    "icon": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yourusername/aloha-your-plugin/refs/heads/main/public/icon.svg"
  }
]

5. Commit changes and create a Pull Request

Registry Entry Fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
repo	string	✅	GitHub repository in username/repo-name format
name	string	✅	Display name shown in the marketplace
author	string	✅	Your name or organization
description	string	✅	Brief description of functionality (1-2 sentences)
icon	string		Direct URL to your icon file

After Publishing

Wait for Registry Approval

After submitting your PR to aloha-releases:

1. Your submission will be reviewed
2. Once approved and merged, your plugin appears in the marketplace
3. Users can now discover and install your plugin

Next Steps

• Release Requirements - Review basic plugin release requirements
• Adding Dependencies - Bundle NPM packages
• Examples - See published plugin examples
• SDK Features - Explore SDK features