doc: Fix existing doc to promote che plugins and packaging with vscode extension rather than Theia plugins.

[sunix]

Is your task related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently in our documentation, we are referring to che-theia plugins or theia plugins. But Theia plugins are advanced concepts that we are using but community would not be interested into. Theia plugins concepts could go to contributing.md files where people would like to contribute to che-theia.
Community would rather be interested in VSCode extension + che.

Describe the solution you'd like

So my suggestion is that in our documentation we:

1. Replace any occurence of Che-theia plugins with Che plugins (that would be a VSCode ext packaged in a side car containers)
2. In the contributor guide, we shouldn't go through the creation of theia plugins but vscode extensions. Also it is not clear if a Che-theia plugin is a Che plugin or a Theia plugin. We should use only the 2 words in all our doc: Che plugin and VSCode extension. A Che plugin is a VSCode ext packaged in a sidecar container.
   

[mmorhun]

@sunix thank you for the proposal, but I am afraid calling VSCode extensions packed into sidecar container as Che plugins is not correct.
Starting from Che 7 we declare support for many IDEs. And if we talk about Che plugin we talk about something which works with Che independently from used IDE. Which is not true in your proposal. So, to me it leads to even more confusion: a user chooses an IDE, then adds a Che plugin and it doesn't work...
To avoid such situations we should clearly say, that VSCode extensions packed into sidecar container is a Che-Theia plugin or Che plugin for Che-Theia IDE. Which means that it is supposed to work only with Che-Theia.

[sunix]

Yes we have the ability to switch editors but the default would still be Theia. Theia will add another technology which people don't really care about. Like if we had to tell that it is a Che-theia-monaco-typescript plugin. Let's stick to what is the basics information and not adding too much informations that will confuse.

I guess there is a section about switching editors but this is a corner case. We could specify that vscode che plugins won't work in this case.

[mmorhun]

But one of the points is that Che users may easily switch editor from Che dashboard.
The story with Monaco in Theia is completely different: you cannot just replace it easily for something else without writing source code (I think a lot of it).

[sunix]

Maybe some user would try it. But they would just try it not use it for coding. But finally most of our users will use che-theia for coding.

[sunix]

And i don't see how saying that it is a Che-theia plugin and not a Che plugin will help them to understand that the could run a VSCode extension or not.

[mmorhun]

Probably most of the users will choose Che Theia as IDE, but I think we'll have users who use different IDE as well.
As about VS Code extensions: docs should say, that a VS Code extension may be packed as Che Theia plugin.

[sunix]

Most people won't choose, they would just use Theia but won't know what is Theia. They are not interested into it.

The doc should say "VSCode extension + side car containers" and we should avoid introducing other technologies to these concepts. Che plugins is the best option to avoid user to be confused with the Theia plugins or Theia extensions which have nothing to do with a vscode extension + sidecar containers.

Frankly speaking, some users are already confused, this issue is not coming from no where. So please don't use Che-theia plugins at all, anywhere.

Also, your che plugin could work not only on Theia. Theia is the tool that runs our vscode ext at the moment. But, as you say, we could switch editor so it could be another editor that would consume vscode ext + sidecar containers

[mmorhun]

To me we shouldn't put into docs things which is not completely true. It will lead to confusion and probably bad reaction from people who decide to sort it out (which is not complicated). At the end, our users are developers and I believe it won't be hard for them to understand (and know name of the editor in which they are working).

[sunix]

what is true is that vscode extension + side car container is not specific to theia. you could run them with theia but it could be another runtime. So what is the confusion ?

[monaka]

I guess it can be resolved by putting more layers.
Like:

• Contributing Guide
  • Che-Theia
    • Developing Plug-ins
      • @theia/plugin
      • sidecar container with vscode-ext
  • GWT-IDE (... if supported in someday)
  • ANOTHER_IDE (... not known yet)