Bootstrap an XD plugin with xdpm

I had a little time to unwind by coding during Adobe MAX this year, and pushed a new branch bootsie to xdpm, the CLI for XD plugin development utilities. It’s something I started hacking on a bit in May to make the process of getting a basic XD plugin started even easier for those who prefer working in the Terminal.

Generate your XD plugin

If we merge this branch, you’ll be able to bootstrap XD plugins with xdpm.

Current usage (any of the following):

$ xdpm bootstrap
$ xdpm bootstrap panel
$ xdpm bootstrap my-plugin
$ xdpm bootstrap panel my-plugin

Plugin type options:

• headless (default)
• panel
• modal
• react

Each of the bootstrap options is pulled directly from the XD plugin samples repo on GitHub, which are updated to align with changes as the Plugin API evolves.

Thanks and acknowledgements

Thanks to Pablo Klaschka and Kerri Shotts for the feedback and discussion around this pull request.

This option for bootstrapping will join at least two others that are already out there.

• generator-xd-plugin for Yeoman
• xd-plugin-boilerplate

Depending on your needs, these may offer features that better align with your workflow.

Possible future work

I hope others will find this feature useful in its current iteration and that it serves as a solid starting point for more robust bootstrapping options in the future.

Some things that have either been suggested or are otherwise on my mind:

• Custom template support
• Production-oriented instrumentation
• Interactive mode
• A more performant way to pull the default samples (currently all samples are cloned, then all but one are removed)
• Verbose mode with informative stdout/stderr output

Feel free to jump in on the pull request discussion.