Supported way to extend the PVE web UI for a third-party package?

[Chiranth J S <Chiranth.JS@datacore.com>]

Hello,

I work at DataCore SANsymphony team. We ship a SANsymphony storage backend for PVE on the supported PVE::Storage::Plugin contract,  presenting vDisks over iSCSI. That side has worked well and is in production with customers.

We also have a prototype that adds a native-feeling UI on top of it (a tab with vDisk aliases, snapshot/rollback, resize and performance). Since we couldn't find an official UI-extension hook, it currently works by patching two pve-manager files at install time — adding a <script> tag to index.html.tpl and a register_method for a /nodes/<node>/datacore/... route in PVE/API2/Nodes.pm — with a dpkg trigger to re-apply after upgrades.

We understand the long-standing guidance that features should be added "directly, no plugin," and we're weighing whether to productize this. Before we decide, two questions:


  1.
Is there any supported or planned mechanism to extend the PVE web UI (add a view/tab) or register a nodes/<node>/... API2 route from a third-party package — anything analogous to the storage plugin contract, but for the frontend?
  2.
If not, is in-place patching of index.html.tpl / Nodes.pm considered an acceptable approach (several community projects do this), or does it put a node in an unsupported state from your perspective? Is there a pattern you'd recommend instead?


A clear "there's no supported hook, don't patch core files" is just as useful to us as a yes.
Thanks for your time, and for the storage plugin API.

Best regards,
Chiranth JS