I added the Cordova StatusBar plugin (supported on iOS and not on Android) to my HMT project. When run this project on an Android emulator, the statusbar plugin is not loaded by the tooling, even though a reference to the plugin is added to the starting page of the app - index.html.

See the referenced screenshot as an example.

This is not the case when using the Cordova CLI. The CLI commands ensure that the JS file for the StatusBar plugin is loaded on Android. While a 404 is not harmful in this case, it is certainly not recommended.

As a note, we must try and match the Cordova CLI behavior as much as possible, and this is a slight deviation from it - the iOS-specific plugin is referenced in android/assets/www/cordova_plugins.js in the Android project but is not copied to the android/assets/www/plugins directory in the project.