Obsidian Plugin Build Script

A script to build the plugins inside a given Obsidian vault from their source code and move the built artifacts to their corresponding folders.

Warning

This plugin will clean git submodules (if there are any), which may be considered destructive! Make sure to commit your changes before running.

Information

• Credit

Requirements

• jq
• Whatever is required to build the plugin(s) you want to include, which almost definitely means npm.

Supported Plugin Types

This script should support most plugins, however if a plugin uses a custom build strategy or there is an intermediate build step, it may not yet be supported.

Plugin build strategy	Supported
esbuild (default)	✅
Yarn	✅
Obsidian Dev Utils	✅
Excalidraw (custom)	✅

Usage

See Esoteric Thought / Primitive Notions for an example usage of this script.

Run the script with the following command:

./build_obsidian_plugins.sh "vault" "source"

Parameters

• vault: The path to the root of your vault. This is the folder containing the .obsidian folder.
• source: The path from a plugin directory (.obsidian/plugins/plugin) to its source code.

Error Codes

• 1: Failed to move to or from a directory.
• 2: No argument provided.
• 3: Directory or file does not exist.
• 4: Failed to read file.
• 5: Failed to install dependencies.
• 6: Failed to build.
• 7: Failed to install plugin.
• 8: Failed to clean up.
• 9: Failed to create a directory or file.

License

© 2025 Esoteric Enderman

Obsidian Plugin Build Script is licensed under the AGPL 3.0 only.

Topics

^{bash, script, scripting, scripts, bash-script, obsidian, bash-scripting, bash-scripts, obsidian-plugin, obsidian-md, obsidian-vault, obsidian-plugins, obsidianmd, obsidian-notes, obsidian-script, obsidian-plugin-development}