gmodule high-level interface?

[Bibek Sahu <scorpio dodds net>]

Hello all,

	I'm new to the list, so please correct me if this has already been
tackled.  However, I looked in the list archives and saw nothing of direct
relevance there.

	I was wondering if there was any interest in a higher-level
interface to gmodule.  I consider gmodule to be very good at handling
modules in a cross-platform manner, but using it to handle 'plugins' is
still a bit of a chore.

	I noticed that gmodule has been updated at the low-level to handle
libtool archives and other such enhancements.  This is wonderful, and
makes it that much better, but it doesn't really make it much easier to
use (in a cross-platform manner).

	Specifically, I consider the following problems relevant:

	* no way to get a list of available modules (possibly looking only
	  in certain directories)

	* no way to find the prefix and suffix used by g_module_build_path,
	  making it almost impossible for developers to search for plugins
	  in a fully cross-platform manner.  In Linux, I can name a library
	  anything I want and have it load correctly, but will this
	  necessarily apply for all OS's on which gmodule is available? 
	  Even when I can use any name, using g_module_build_path (in order
	  to stick to standard library names) precludes being able to search
	  for plugins residing somewhere on the filesystem (because doing so
	  necessitates knowing a prefix and suffix).

	
	The two above I consider relevant portability concerns.  They're
also very easy to correct -- provide a way to retrieve the library prefix
and suffix, and/or provide a way to get a list of available modules.

	I would also like to see some convenience functions to make modules
easier to use.  It would be very nice to be able to provide a list of
directories to search, then say g_module_request( "plugin_a" );.  This is
actually very simple to implement, and in my opinion would make the API a
lot more pleasant to use.

	I recently wrote a C++ wrapper for gmodule (called, surprise,
'gmodule--'; project gmodulemm at sourceforge :-).  It provides a thin
wrapper over gmodule loading & so forth.  However, it also has a separate
class to simplify loading modules (and a third class to simplify creating
C++ plugins; useful, thanks to symbol-mangling).  If there is interest, I
can pull some of the basic load and search routines back to C.  The
low-level stuff is mostly in C anyway, so it should be quite simple.

	So... opinions? :-)

Thanks,

Bibek