Feat: Support for new `add` command

[sunker]

Which areas does this feature request relate to

• Create Plugin
• Sign Plugin
• Plugin E2E
• Plugin Meta Extractor
• Documentation

Problem

The create-plugin tool currently supports creating new plugins (datasource, panel, apps and scenes-apps) and migrating existing codebases through the upcoming migrate command. However, devs sometimes have the need to incrementally enhance existing plugins with optional capabilities that aren’t required for every use case. For example plugin i18n support or more advanced configuration.

At the moment, these additions must be done manually, which can be tedious and error-prone. Developers need to know the correct file locations, import patterns, and configuration steps, leading to repetitive setup work and inconsistencies across projects. This friction discourages adoption of best practices and wastes time that could instead be spent on feature development.

Solution

Introduce a new add command in the create-plugin tool that allows developers to easily add optional features to existing plugins.

The add command would reuse the same migration logic used by the migrate command, ensuring that changes are predictable, incremental, and idempotent. Each optional feature (for example, i18n) would be implemented as a small migration package, defining all necessary file additions, configuration updates and wiring.

Example usage:

npx @grafana/create-plugin add i18n --locales fr-FR,de-DE

This command would scaffold the specified translation files, add dependencies, initialize the i18n setup, update configuration and add i18n e2e tests automatically.

Other possible future add-ons might include:

• Add plugin instrumentation, telemetry or profiling support
• Setting up CI workflows
• Enabling telemetry

Basically all optional plugin capabilities described in how-to guides and in the plugin type specific guides in the developer portal.

Alternatives

No response

Additional context

No response

Are you interested in contributing the solution?

• Yes
• No