starrocks/fe/plugin

StarRocks FE Plugins

The fe/plugin directory hosts plugin implementations and integration glue for the Frontend. Plugins extend the FE core with capabilities beyond the built-in features by implementing interfaces from fe/spi and interacting with FE core through stable contracts.

Unlike connectors:

• Connectors focus on integrating external data sources and catalogs.
• Plugins focus on extending core capabilities (authorization, authentication, governance, observability, etc.) and do not act as data source bridges.

Responsibilities

• Implement FE SPI contracts to augment core behavior.
• Provide optional features that can be enabled/disabled without altering FE internals.
• Remain decoupled from FE private classes; depend only on fe/spi and public abstractions.

Typical plugin capabilities

• Authorization providers (e.g., Apache Ranger integration)
• Authentication providers (e.g., LDAP, Kerberos)
• Auditing and logging sinks
• Observability hooks (metrics/tracing exporters)
• Resource governance and admission control hooks
• Policy, masking, and row-level access integrations

Note: Exact plugin types depend on the available SPI extension points.

How it interacts with FE core

• FE core programs against fe/spi interfaces.
• Plugins implement those interfaces and are discovered/loaded at runtime.
• FE core invokes plugin hooks during authentication, authorization, session, or administrative flows as defined by the SPI.

Implementing a plugin

1. Identify relevant interfaces in fe/spi (e.g., authN/authZ, auditing, hooks).
2. Create a new module or package for your plugin and depend on fe/spi.
3. Implement the SPI contracts and provide discovery metadata.
4. Add configuration parsing/validation and document required settings.
5. Ensure thread-safety; plugins may be invoked concurrently.
6. Write tests (unit for SPI behavior; integration for end-to-end flows).

Guidelines:

• Keep implementations stateless where possible or guard state with proper synchronization.
• Fail fast on misconfiguration; surface actionable error messages.
• Do not block FE critical paths; use timeouts/backoff for I/O.
• Never log secrets or PII; honor FE security and redaction policies.

Lifecycle

• Initialize: receive configuration/context and validate dependencies.
• Runtime: serve concurrent requests through defined SPI hooks.
• Shutdown: release external resources (clients, threads) idempotently.

Configuration

• Use namespaced keys for plugin options.
• Support secure secret handling (env, keystores, injected credentials).
• Provide safe defaults and minimal required parameters.

Versioning and compatibility

• Track and declare the fe/spi version supported by the plugin.
• Prefer backward-compatible changes; deprecate before breaking compatibility.
• Document compatibility with external systems (e.g., Ranger/LDAP/Kerberos versions).

Security considerations

• Enforce authorization and authentication semantics defined by FE.
• Validate and sanitize all external inputs.
• Avoid leaking sensitive data in logs, errors, or metrics.

Non-goals

• Plugins are not data source connectors and should not expose catalog/table access.
• Plugins must not depend on FE private/internal classes beyond SPI boundaries.

References

• SPI contracts: fe/spi/
• FE core entry points: fe/fe-core/src/main/java/com/starrocks/
• Project docs: https://docs.starrocks.io/