Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Central plugin repository

["Federico \"Lox\" Lucignano" <federico lox gmail com>]

Il giorno mer, 09/04/2008 alle 10.57 -0400, Charlotte Curtis ha scritto:
>     Federico, I think the Launchpad idea is a great one.  However, Alexandre brought up an important point: approving plugins.  If all available plugins on Launchpad were included in the plugger-in plugin, it might be a good idea to differentiate between those in early-alpha and those in functional beta.  Does Launchpad have any sort of tagging functionality that could take care of this, so that those in charge of approving plugins could put a "stamp of approval" on plugins that are deemed ready for public consumption?  Or perhaps a separate "meta-repository" that links to all approved projects?
>     
>     Charlotte

Launchpad can manage several "branches" or "tags" for each project, so no problem in separating experimental/unstable/stable plug-ins (I like the Debian terminology

) and each "admin" can tag/branch code as needed

Just take a look at the features currently in launchpad for more details: https://launchpad.net/+about


>     On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 10:29 AM, Alexandre <airmind gmail com> wrote:
> >         You could take a look in a plugin I developed that does most of what you want: NewStuffManager in http://airmind.googlepages.com/rhythmboxplugins
> >     
> >          
> >     
> >         The NewStuffManager daemon will be renamed according to its author, and it will probably be incorporated in the next Gnome version (if it is not already). 
> >     
> >         What is still missing is a central repository where users can upload their own plugins to get approval and be availiable to ohers. Maybe the Google App Engine could help in this task, but I think it wont be availiable very soon.
> >     
> >          
> >     
> >         Tell me what you think if you try it. The plugins in there are a little outdated, and I havent included others that have appeared, but the system works in general.
> >     
> >          
> >     
> >         Bye,
> >     
> >         Alexandre
> >     

Yep, I already heard of this new "desktop-environment-wide-extension-management" thingy, it would be a cool addition to GNOME when it will be shipped with the default package (thing that probably won't happen since Capuchin [ http://capuchin.k-d-w.org/node/7 ], NewStuffManager's actual implementation, is written in C#/Mono, and we all know that GNOME is not going to have Mono-related dependencies as the dev team has said recently, maybe Banshee, as Deskbar, will embrace this new cool feature), but till that very moment I think is better doing something than simply wait forever

Once Capuchin will be released as a GNOME component and all the biggest extensible apps will embrace it (and it ain't gonna happen until the project will switch back to a C/Python implementation) we could easily convert "our" repository and write a Capuchin Python downloader for RB, I don't see any problem at all.

In the end we should also consider that RB's users of the 0.11.x series are running different distros, this means that not everyone is going to use the latest shiny GNOME release available (there are more Linuxers than Ubunteros 'round here, though it's not my case

 ), so, in my opinion, a plug-in is the way to go right now.

What the installer plug-in should do in addition to Alexandre's one is manage 2/3 different "sets" of plug-ins as I definitely agree with Charlotte (i.e. we must separate alpha plugs from stable ones and let the user make his choices)

We should also have something like a "quality jury" which should take care of inspecting plug-ins for security issues before making them available through the installer (going back to Capuchin, this is one of the main issues right now, and thanks to the Gods RB's third-party plug-ins are usually short python/C source files easy to read/analyze).

-- 
Dott. Federico Lucignano

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