blog/source/docs/installing_plugins.md

title: Installing Plugins layout: docs

Embark offers a variety of plugins you can choose from and you can even build your own to make Embark work with your tool of choice. Let's take a look at how to install and configure plugins for Embark.

Finding the right plugin

Before we can install a plugin we need to know which one we want to install first. Finding the right plugin shouldn't be too hard. Supported Embark plugins are listed on the Plugins page. Sometimes it's also helpful to search for repositories on GitHub that have an embark- prefix.

Downloading plugins

Once we know what plugin we're interested in, it's really just a matter of adding them to our existing project. This can be done either by downloading and installing them via a package manager such as npm, or even through simple cloning using Git.

The following command installs a plugin for the solc compiler:

$ npm install embark-solc --save

This will also update our projects package.json as we're adding the plugin as a project dependency.

Configuring plugins

After installation, we can configure the plugin. What configuration options exist depends entirely on the plugin but the way how configuration works is always the same.

To configure a plugin, add a dedicated section to your project's embark.json file:

...
"plugins": {
  "embark-solc": {}
}
...

Once that is done, check out the available configuration options for your plugin of choice. The embark-solc plugin allows for configuring whether the plugin should generate binary output or not using the outputBinary option.

The following code sets activates this feature:

...
"plugins": {
  "embark-solc": {
    "outputBinary": true
  }
}
...