Plug-in levitate is-compatible as part of the plugin-validator report against the target grafanaDependency version
academo opened this issue · 2 comments
e.g.:
Validate plugins using the new topBarNavigation API to not target grafana <9.2
added this one to the plugin submission improvements theme
After some local tries and testing I concluded that this validation is not practical.
The way grafana plugins load the grafana packages (e.g. ui, runtime, data), is taking what is provided by grafana in runtime. This runtime version doesn't necessarily match the version the plugin was compiled (and type checked) against.
Furthermore, a type conflict between packages version doesn't necessarily means the plugin won't run in runtime. E.g.: a function used to accept an string and now accepts an enum. But the runtime still handles the case for a non-defined enum key. This is something that won't compile in TS but it'll work in runtime.
This means one can't reliable detect if a plugin will be backwards compatible by checking against the types of a current version with a previous version. The check will constantly generate conflicts which even though problematic in TS won't be a problem in runtime and that can only be checked manually. This will defeat the point of an automated check.
To finish, many plugins that target older versions of grafana rely on these runtimes being compatible even if types are not, which would make it impossible to fix in the source code.