Re: Plugin Unloading

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 23:32, Bob Smith wrote:
> Another question for the design doc.
> 
> The current design seems to be based around a plugin offering up
> services to be consumed. The application is then in charge of consuming
> a service. The question is, how do we handle the user going into a GUI
> and telling the app to unload the foo plugin? It can't be unloaded
> until the application stops using it. Should we have an event of sorts
> on a plugin class / service class to say, this plugin is unloading,
> expect it to go away? That sounds like it could be a lot of work for
> the programmer using the plugin system.
> 
we already have the ref counting thing in GObject, so I think the best
thing is that plugins unload themselves when the ref count reaches 0.

> We could use refcounting and say, the plugin is unloadable only when
> refcount is 0. But then the app can't hold on to a service when its not
> being used. For my app, this wouldn't work well at all. It could work
> for my app if I forced the use of ghost services so maybe it is ok.
> 
if an app wants to unload it, and it still has some references, it will
just refuse to be unloaded.

cheers