Re: [Banshee-List] Add-ins Repo - Tomboy team is looking for a home

[Michael Stephenson <mickstephenson ovi com>]

On Mon, 2011-04-18 at 13:39 -0500, Gabriel Burt wrote:
> No, Banshee doesn't use Mono.Addin's concept/support for online
> repositories.  We do have an enhancement bug report open tracking the
> idea: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=535818 .  MonoDevelop
> does use it, however.

Alternately you could follow the approach of this bug:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=641619

And use packagekit. The problem with using Mono.Addin's is that plugins
have their own dependencies, so you end up with users installing the
lirc plugin when they don't have lircd installed. Then you have to tell
the user to manually install lircd.

Right now if a plugin is not installed a user browsing banshee will be
unaware of it's existence, this would allow banshee to be aware of any
plugin that is packaged by in that distributions package.

This would also remove the need on ubuntu to have the BCE metapackage
which installs every community extension, alongs with its dependencies,
such as the lircd daemon even if the plugin is not enabled.

I know packagekit isn't currently installed by default on ubuntu for
example, but if installed it works perfectly alongside apt and doesn't
cause any problems.

I don't see how a plugin browser/installer could be satisfactorily
achieved any other way.

Wouldn't it be a jolly nice collaborative project between Banshee and
Tomboy to create a mono/packagekit plugin browser/installer framework?