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Developer guide

JBrowse 2 is published as products people run and plugins that add to them. This page describes both, links working plugins to read, and indexes the guides for each kind of pluggable element.

Products and plugins

Two kinds of package are published on their own: products and plugins.

A product owns a PluginManager and loads plugins at runtime. A plugin's install() registers what it packages: views, tracks, display types, adapters, and the MST autoruns that extend the rest of the app.

A product is an application published on its own: jbrowse-web in a browser, jbrowse-desktop in Electron, jbrowse-cli on the command line, and the embedded React components.

A plugin adds functionality to a product at runtime. Anyone can write and publish one, and a product loads plugins from a URL. A product can also be built with its plugins bundled in, which is what the embedded components do.

A product instantiates the RootModel, and the state tree below it runs from the session through views, tracks and displays. Each React component on the right observes the state node across from it.

Example plugins

Plugin templates:

Working plugin examples:

The jbrowse-plugin-list is the community plugin registry: browse it to find published plugins, or submit your own through a pull request.

Guides by topic

Getting started

Plugins

Core concepts

Advanced topics