What is the .link_to_grails_plugins folder used for?

Question

Background: I'm just learning Groovy and Grails. I inherited a project from someone who has disavowed themselves of it completely, so I'm basically just thumbing around blindly. I am using the Springsource IDE.

My source had a number of plugin dependencies. I attempted to install these via the plugin manager but one plugin (image-tools) was not available through that medium and needed to be installed separately. I've been unable to install it or the others, as I always end up with build errors which apparently reverts the partial plugin install. While search for references to the image-tools plugin which I could comment out in an attempt to get SOMETHING compiling correctly, I found the .link_to_grails_plugins directory, which seemed to contain the source of all the necessary grails plugins.

Adding this to my classpath and rebuilding seemed to let me make some progress, but I'm not sure if that's what I should actually be doing. Can someone explain to me what this folder is used for? Google hasn't been particularly helpful.

Answer 1

.link_to_grails_plugins is not a standard Grails directory - it has been created by the STS IDE.

The Grails plugins are cached in the grails.project.plugins.dir and grails.global.plugins.dir as described in the documentation for Customizing the Build:

The image-tools plugin documentation indicates that it must be built from the source and provides the instructions for doing so.