Building and testing a new connector or processor plugin

Develop a new connector or processor plugin following existing examples that can be found in the connector and processor repositories. Some key points to be aware of:

1. Follow the prescribed package structure for each plugin, only changing the module and class name as needed.
2. Inherit the GeoEDFPlugin class and implement the appropriate class method for your plugin (get, filter, or process).
3. You should be able to keep the __init__ method as is, except for fixing the error messages and required and optional parameter lists.
4. Each plugin is fashioned as a Python package. Make sure to modify the setup.py script to include any Python library dependencies and other static data files.
5. Each plugin is eventually turned into a Singularity container. A helpful high-level recipe based on NVIDIA’s HPC Container Maker is provided along with each existing plugin. Adapt this recipe.hpccm file for your plugin. Typically, you would only need to change the plugin name in a few places unless your plugin requires any additional system libraries. Take a look at the OS Packages section in the HDFEOSShapefileMask processor’s recipe for ideas.

Once your plugin has been developed and organized in a folder like other existing plugins, you can and should test it before officially submitting it as a pull request (PR) to the GeoEDF repository.

Testing

You can test your plugins in GeoEDF’s development environment container. Follow the instructions in the geoedf/RK_02_EarthCube_GeoEDF_Demo.ipynb Jupyter notebook which will walk you through the process of building a Singularity container image of your plugin and then using it in a GeoEDF workflow. You can use any previously published connector or processor plugin in your testing. A list of these plugins can be found in this documentation.