[Extensions] Discoverability/Dependency Management

[minalsha]

Problem: Plugins are not discoverable from the distribution. There is no way for a customer to know what plugins exist in the community and how to install them. Also customers have to understand the versioning compatibilities of OpenSearch and other plugins.

Working Backwards:
Who are the actors in the community:
a. Extension developer
b. Extension user

What would the customer like to see/use:
a. Discover all OpenSearch extensions in one place.
b. Not worry about extension and its dependencies, but just install and ready to go.

How we’d like to solve it:

• Solving the problem of versioning, it results into another problem which is dependency management. We should build a package manager which understands the extension manifest and manage all its dependencies (including dependencies on other plugins).
• The extension manifest would contain version, dependencies, security policies etc.
• Build and publish extension manifest which would be the first step towards the catalog.