CDE / CDF components and templates in Pentaho solution directory

Someone brought to my attention that this is a very useful, though undocumented feature. TL;DR,  you can have templates and components in the solution directory and not in the plugin directory, that gets wiped on upgrades


It's a common requirement having to develop templates or components to extend the capabilities of the Ctools. The normal place is to put it in the solution/system/plugin directory, along the others.

However, that has a huge inconvenience - whenever we upgrade / reinstall the plugin we need to copy the resources back, not forgetting to do a backup before.

That's not actually needed since a while back. If we put the resources directly under the pentaho-solution// all the Ctools will know what to do.

Here's a real life example that can serve as reference:

cde
├── components
│   ├── EmailPrpt
│   │   ├── component.xml
│   │   ├── emailPrpt-implementation.js
│   │   └── emailPrpt.xaction
│   └── VideoGallery
│       ├── ceebox-implementation.js
│       ├── component.xml
│       ├── css
│       │   └── ceebox.css
│       ├── images
│       │   ├── cee-close-btn.png
│       │   ├── cee-next-btn.gif
│       │   ├── cee-next-btn.png
│       │   ├── cee-prev-btn.gif
│       │   ├── cee-prev-btn.png
│       │   └── loader.gif
│       ├── jquery.ceebox.js
│       └── jquery.swfobject.js
├── styles
│   └── Clean.html
├── templates
│   └── index.xml
└── widgets
    ├── IncomeStatementDetailTable.cdfde
    ├── IncomeStatementDetailTable.component.xml
    ├── IncomeStatementDetailTable.wcdf
    ├── index.xml
    ├── sample.cda
    ├── sample.cdfde
    └── sample.wcdf
cdf
├── components
│   ├── jfreechart-cda.xaction
│   └── traffic.xaction
├── includes
│   ├── index.xml
│   └── Operations
│       ├── facilityAccount.cda
│       ├── facilityAccount.cdfde
│       ├── facilityAccount.wcdf
│       └── index.xml
└── index.xml