Up until today, I’ve only tried installing build plugins via netlify.toml
so their config can be version controlled - e.g.:
[[plugins]]
package = "netlify-plugin-cache-nextjs"
But since I was curious, I wanted to try out the build plugin installation workflow in the Netlify UI to see how it was different. After I’d installed one plugin, I was surprised to see that the Plugins page (https://app.netlify.com/sites/<site name>/plugins
) only showed the plugin I’d installed via the UI (Lighthouse), and not the one defined in my netlify.toml
:
This makes the plugins dashboard not actually a reliable source of truth – it currently claims there’s 1 plugin installed, when there are actually 2! I could (and will) just move this plugin to netlify.toml
so they’re all defined in one place, but this Plugins dashboard is extremely valuable. This page gives you a quick overview of what’s installed with descriptions, authors, and links to docs and repos, none of which you get from staring into the abyss of TOML. If this page did show plugins installed via netlify.toml
it would save users a lot of time having to mentally reconcile both sources of truth to figure out what’s actually installed, and save time having to hunt down authors, repos, and docs links if netlify.toml
is the sole source of truth for build plugins in your repo.
Expected
The Netlify build plugins page shows both plugins installed via the plugins directory and plugins installed via netlify.toml
on the repo’s default branch.
Actual
The Netlify build plugins page shows plugins installed via the plugins directory, but not plugins installed via netlify.toml
on the repo’s default branch.
Let me know if there’s any more info I could add that would be helpful!