[mythtv] Revamping the plugin system.

[J. Donavan Stanley]

Isaac Richards wrote:

>On Thursday 27 November 2003 06:54 pm, J. Donavan Stanley wrote:
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>
>>Isaac Richards wrote:
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>>>On Thursday 27 November 2003 01:42 pm, J. Donavan Stanley wrote:
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>>>>There's a piece of the puzzle I left out, the PluginLoader... If you
>>>>want your plugins in C, it'd be trival to implment a PluginLoader that
>>>>creates the required interface by using pointers to exported functions,
>>>>much in the way I currently do it for legacy plugins.  If you want them
>>>>in some sort of scripting language, then once you've got bindings done,
>>>>via SWIG or what have you, then create a loader that can load plugins
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>from scripts as well.  The new system doesn't lose any existing
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>>>>functionality or flexibility only adds it.  The discovery of plugins is
>>>>done by the PluginManager via it's register PluginLoaders.  The
>>>>PluginManager doesn't care where the plugins come from just that there's
>>>>a mechanism to get Plugin* from a plugin loader.
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>>>>
>>>You're overdesigning things horribly.  Simple is best, always.
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>>hrm ok...  Glad I got your opinion before trying to submit this stuff
>>then.  I'm curious though, if four objects or so that provide a
>>constistant estensible frame work for plugins is an overdesign, what's
>>your plan for plugins?
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>>
>
>If you want major changes, you need to prove that they're needed.  Nothing 
>that you've described can't be done within the existing framework, or with 
>small extensions to it like Thor's already done for mfd, or even like what 
>I've done in the past few days with the jump point stuff.
>
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I guess my take on it was that it's better to take a step back and 
rearchitect things rather than shoehorn them in.  The systems aren't all 
that different, all in all, if you'd prefer that I work within the 
existing framework that's fine.  That's why I floated this up after I 
got the design and proof of concept done instead of after I'd done the 
whole nine yards. I'll start working on the MediaHandler stuff as an 
optional extension to the existing plguins.