enable custom plugins/middlewares for Traefik

[migueleliasweb]

After seeing the Go1.8 new plugin feature I though that this could help a lot o people to add specific functionalities to Traefik.

Instead of building/compiling/shipping a custom-made version of Traefik to enable a custom functionality it would be possible to write way simpler custom-made middlewares with this approach, doesn't it ?

Try imagine creating a package that receives the request at a parameter without having to recompile the whole Traefik repository just to add a small change. Does it sounds like a middleware ? Because for me it is ! It's just a go1.8-plugin-based-middleware !

What do you guys think ?

[timoreimann]

@migueleliasweb thanks for the suggestion. That does sound like a pretty interesting idea.

I haven't worked with Go's new plugin framework yet, so I can't judge on what it's like to work with it from a practical point of view. One concern I'm seeing is that right now, plugins are only supported on Linux. While this should probably not be too much of an issue when running Traefik in production (most people supposedly use Linux or Docker anyway), it's going to make development on any other platform much harder. You'd have to revert to tricks like running your builds off of a Docker container with the source code being bind-mounted in.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't do it because of these restrictions, but that we have to make sure the development workflow is acceptably usable for people not running Linux natively.

[migueleliasweb]

Hey @timoreimann ! I'm aware of the possible limitation since the Go plugin feature is still in it's early phase of development but soon I hope this feature will be released for all platforms and architectures.

Just keep in mind this is a cool feature and this could lead a much faster development of modules and extra features for traefik from the community ;D.

[timoreimann]

Full ACK, the potential is pretty huge.

[sandstrom]

Plugins to transform request/response would be great! The ability to adjust headers (add/remove/edit) alone would go a long way.