What is an inline plugin in Grails 2.X? How to make a plugin inline? I can find the documentation for Grails 3 but not for Grails 2.
Inline plugins in Grails 2.x are outlined in the documentation section for plugins.
From the documentation:
An application can load plugins from anywhere on the file system, even if they have not been installed. Specify the location of the (unpacked) plugin in the application's grails-app/conf/BuildConfig.groovy file
Creating an inline plugin is done using the grails create-plugin command, just like a non-inline plugin.
The only real difference between an inline-plugin and regular plugin is how it is referenced by your application. A normal plugin is pulled from a repository (such as maven) while an inline-plugin exists in source format local to the application that is using it. Take for example:
/usr/foo/grails/MyApplication
/usr/foo/grails/MyInlinePlugin
/usr/foo/grails/MyOtherInlinePlugin
The above application (MyApplication) can include the two plugins listed as inline plugins by using the following in the BuildConfig.groovy
// BuildConfig.groovy
grails.plugin.location.'my-inline-plugin' = "../MyInlinePlugin"
grails.plugin.location.'my-other-inline-plugin' = "../MyOtherInlinePlugin"
Overall inline plugins are useful when developing (or testing) a plugin as well as creating modular Grails applications.