Build and Package Your Extension Manually

The build and package pipelines provide everything you need to package and deploy your extensions. However, you can also use Grunt to build and package an extension directly on your local machine, and then install the extension on the Oracle Cloud Application.

To build an extension locally, you'll need to save the extension's sources to your local system. You can get the sources by:

• Cloning or downloading the Git repository containing the sources, or

• Exporting the extension from Visual Builder and extracting it to your local system.

For instructions on getting the sources, see Download Your Application's Sources in Building Responsive Applications with Visual Builder Studio

The root folder of your extension's sources includes two resource files that Grunt uses when building the extension:

File	Description
Gruntfile.js	Contains a basic Grunt script for building the extension that can be modified to add custom build tasks, and to configure built-in tasks. See Customize Your Grunt Build Process in Building Responsive Applications with Visual Builder Studio.
package.json	Declares the dependency and specifies the URL reference to the grunt-vb-build and grunt-vb-audit NPM packages that provides the Grunt tasks used to build and audit extensions. VB Studio automatically updates the package version and URL whenever Oracle publishes a new version of the package.

The build process for an extension using Grunt includes the following steps:

Step	Description
Process the sources	This step consists of several important processes. The most important is "metadata processing", when the extension sources are transformed into a deployable form. You run the vb-process-local task to process the sources of the extension that you downloaded to your local system. This task creates an output directory (./build/processed) with built assets that can be consumed by the vb-package and vb-deploy tasks.
Optimize the processed sources	This step consists of a number of parts, including optimizing images, optimizing styles and creating required module bundles. To optimize the processed sources, run the vb-package task. The task generates the ./build/optimized directory with the optimized sources.
Install the extension artifact	This step consists of installing the extension archive on the Oracle Cloud Application. You can install the archive by either: sending a REST request to the Oracle Cloud Application. See Deploy an Extension From Your Local System. running the Grunt vb-deploy task. See Deploy Your Extension Using Grunt.