The liferay-plugins repository is part of the Liferay Portal project. Liferay Portal is an open source enterprise web platform for building business solutions that deliver immediate results and long-term value. Liferay Portal started out as a personal development project in 2000 and was open sourced in 2001.

To get started, check out the project's community homepage at https://liferay.org!

Most of the plugins found in the liferay-plugins repository can be easily installed on Liferay Portal via Liferay Marketplace. To build one or more of the plugins yourself, read below for details.

Liferay's main source code resides in two repositories: liferay-portal and liferay-plugins. Liferay has additional repositories for the following:

• AlloyUI
• Documentation
• Git Tools
• Liferay Faces
• Liferay IDE
• Maven Support

Liferay Portal releases are built from the liferay-portal repository and include select plugins from the liferay-plugins repository. You can build Liferay Portal, its plugins, and/or any of the other supporting technologies from their respective repositories.

For more information on building liferay-portal, see the README file in the liferay-portal repository.

In the liferay-plugins repository, plugins are laid out in a software development kit (SDK) -- the Liferay Plugins SDK. All Liferay plugin types, including portlets, themes, layout templates, hooks, and EXT plugins, can be created and maintained in the SDK. The Plugins SDK chapter of Liferay's Development Guide explains how to create, build, and deploy your plugins. Follow the instructions in this section to build and deploy any of the existing SDK plugins quickly.

For demonstration purposes, let's pretend your user name is joe and you have a Liferay instance bundled with Apache Tomcat running in your /home/joe/ directory.

1. Fork the liferay-plugins repository.

2. Clone your fork of the repository.

3. Create a build.${username}.properties file in the root directory of your liferay-plugins repository clone. Be sure to replace ${username} with your user name.

    /home/joe/liferay-plugins/build.joe.properties
   

   Note, to determine your user name, execute echo %USERNAME% on Windows or whoami on Unix/Linux.

4. In your build.${username}.properties file, specify the app.server.parent.dir property set to the parent path of your app server.

    app.server.parent.dir=/home/joe/liferay-portal-6.1.1-ga2
   

   Use your build.${username}.properties file to specify any additional properties you wish to override from the base build.properties file; do not modify the base file.

5. Navigate to the directory of a plugin (e.g. Sample JSP Portlet) and deploy it using Ant.

    cd /home/joe/liferay-plugins/portlets/sample-jsp-portlet
    ant deploy
   

   The plugin compiles, its WAR file is built to the plugin's dist directory, the WAR file is copied to your Liferay Hot Deploy directory, and the plugin is deployed immediately. It's just that easy!

There are many other options for developing new Liferay plugins using the Plugins SDK. Consult the Liferay Development Guide for indispensable explanations, examples, and reference material on the Liferay Plugins SDK and surrounding technologies.

Also, check out Liferay IDE. The Liferay IDE project provides an Eclipse-based Liferay development environment to help you build and maintain Liferay projects easily.

Finally, consider using Maven to build Liferay Plugins. For excellent overviews of Maven support for Liferay, check out Mika Koivisto's presentation and Getting Started with Liferay Maven SDK.

Liferay welcomes any and all contributions! If you have an idea for a new plugin or a new feature in an existing plugin, and wish to implement it, follow the contribution steps outlined in the CONTRIBUTING guide. It explains how to contribute to Liferay and contains links to additional useful resources.

For more information about filing bugs, staying updated with Liferay on social media, and other ways to participate, check out the Liferay Community Homepage and consult the README file in the liferay-portal repository.

This library, Liferay Portal Community Edition, is free software ("Licensed Software"); you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; including but not limited to, the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY, NONINFRINGEMENT, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA