---
layout: docs
page_title: Plugin Development
description: Learn about Vault plugin development.
---

# Plugin Development

~> Advanced topic! Plugin development is a highly advanced topic in Vault, and
is not required knowledge for day-to-day usage. If you don't plan on writing any
plugins, we recommend not reading this section of the documentation.

Because Vault communicates to plugins over a RPC interface, you can build and
distribute a plugin for Vault without having to rebuild Vault itself. This makes
it easy for you to build a Vault plugin for your organization's internal use,
for a proprietary API that you don't want to open source, or to prototype
something before contributing it back to the main project.

In theory, because the plugin interface is HTTP, you could even develop a plugin
using a completely different programming language! (Disclaimer, you would also
have to re-implement the plugin API which is not a trivial amount of work.)

Developing a plugin is simple. The only knowledge necessary to write
a plugin is basic command-line skills and basic knowledge of the
[Go programming language](http://golang.org).

Your plugin implementation needs to satisfy the interface for the plugin
type you want to build. You can find these definitions in the docs for the
backend running the plugin.

```go
package main

import (
	"os"

	myPlugin "your/plugin/import/path"
	"github.com/hashicorp/vault/api"
	"github.com/hashicorp/vault/sdk/plugin"
)

func main() {
	apiClientMeta := &api.PluginAPIClientMeta{}
	flags := apiClientMeta.FlagSet()
	flags.Parse(os.Args[1:])

	tlsConfig := apiClientMeta.GetTLSConfig()
	tlsProviderFunc := api.VaultPluginTLSProvider(tlsConfig)

	err := plugin.Serve(&plugin.ServeOpts{
		BackendFactoryFunc: myPlugin.Factory,
		TLSProviderFunc:    tlsProviderFunc,
	})
	if err != nil {
		logger := hclog.New(&hclog.LoggerOptions{})

		logger.Error("plugin shutting down", "error", err)
		os.Exit(1)
	}
}
```

And that's basically it! You would just need to change `myPlugin` to your actual
plugin.

[api_addr]: /docs/configuration#api_addr

## Building a Plugin from Source

To build a plugin from source, first navigate to the location holding the
desired plugin version. Next, run `go build` to obtain a new binary for the
plugin. Finally,
[register](/docs/plugins/plugin-architecture#plugin-registration) the
plugin and enable it.

## Plugin Development - Resources

For more information on how to register and enable your plugin, refer to the
[Building Plugin Backends](https://learn.hashicorp.com/vault/developer/plugin-backends)
tutorial.

Other HashiCorp plugin development resources:

* [vault-auth-plugin-example](https://github.com/hashicorp/vault-auth-plugin-example)
* [Custom Secrets Engines](https://learn.hashicorp.com/collections/vault/custom-secrets-engine)

### Plugin Development - Resources - Community

See the [Plugin Portal](/docs/plugins/plugin-portal#community) to find
Community plugin examples/guides developed by community members. HashiCorp does
not validate these for correctness.