Getting Started

Last Update: 25/05/2025

To start developing plugins, you will need the following installed on your computer

Step 1: Start Zoraxy at least once

If you have just cloned Zoraxy from the Github repo, use the following to build and run it once.

cd src/
go mod tidy
go build
sudo ./zoraxy

This would allow Zoraxy to generate all the required folder structure on startup.

After the startup process completes, you would see a folder named “plugins” in the working directory of Zoraxy.

Steps 2: Prepare the development environment for Zoraxy Plugin

Next, you will need to think of a name for your plugin. Lets name our new plugin “Lapwing”.

Notes: Plugin name described in Introspect (will discuss this in later sessions) can contains space, but the folder and compiled binary filename must not contains space and special characters for platform compatibilities reasons.

Follow the steps below to create the folder structure

2.1 Create Plugin Folder

Create a folder with your plugin name in the plugins folder. After creating the folder, you would have something like plugins/Lapwing/ .

2.2 Locate and copy Zoraxy Plugin library

Locate the Zoraxy plugin library from the Zoraxy source code. You can find the zoraxy_plugin Go module under src/mod/plugins/zoraxy_plugin .

Copy the zoraxy_plugin folder from the Zoraxy source code mod folder into the your plugin’s mod folder. Let assume you use the same mod folder name as Zoraxy as mod , then your copied library path should be plugins/Lapwing/mod/zoraxy_plugin .

2.3 Prepare Go Project structure

Create the main.go file for your plugin. In the example above, it would be located at plugins/Lapwing/main.go .

Use go mod init yourdomain.com/foo/plugin_name to initiate your plugin. By default the go.mod file will be automatically generated by the go compiler. Assuming you are developing Lapwing with its source located on Github, this command would be go mod init github.com/your_user_name/Lapwing .

Steps 3: Open plugin folder in IDE

Now open your preferred IDE or text editor and use your plugin folder as the project folder

Now, you are ready to start developing Zoraxy plugin!