Re: Rise of the Plugins

[Lluis Sanchez <lluis ximian com>]

El dj 17 de 05 del 2007 a les 13:12 -0400, en/na Tristan Van Berkom va
escriure:
> On Thu, 2007-05-17 at 18:55 +0200, chuchi wrote:
> > I think like you.
> > 
> > Gnome (and not gnome projects) needs uniform all the functionality of
> > all application making easy to use a common plugin GUI, uniform
> > snippets plugins (gedit plugin) and then I can use it in my editor or
> > into anjuta.
> > 
> > I think there are a lot of copy/paste instead of create a library and
> > share it with all.
> > 
> 
> I think it should be investigated but I'm not too hopeful in this
> respect, there may be a level of copy/paste code going on but usually
> a plugin is a bridge between a code module and either an optional
> backend or possible extention module - the very nature of the core
> module always defines what kind of functionalities should be implemented
> by a backend, and what core functionalities should in turn be shared
> with a backend plugin - even extention plugins (I'm thinking gimp addons
> for example) will have specific argument types:
> 
>    output *plugin_execute (input *);
> 
> some are more complex than just a menuitem "fire me up and let me
> dance" kind of plugin - IMO there is no way at all to generalize
> this.

but still, there is a lot of plug-in infrastructure you can generalize
and reuse:

      * Plug-in manifests (what's the plug-in for? which dependencies
        does it have?). That's information needed when a user wants to
        install/use a plug-in. It can be standardized.
      * Management of plug-ins at run time: discovering, lazy loading,
        unloading, etc.
      * A GUI for downloading, installing, enabling or disabling
        plug-ins. A standard for creating on-line plug-in repositories.

Regards,
Lluis.