Re: Dynamic, Lightweight Plugin System

Victor Boctor wrote:
> I've posted my feedback on the Wiki page.  I like your work to make
> such plug-ins as simple as possible, but I think we should use the
> original requirements as more complete requirements that define the
> vision for this feature.

Replies and answers have been posted.  I did use the original 
requirements page as a guideline for the functionality expected of 
plugins, but I tried to keep everything very streamlined.

The biggest difference is that for my design, I chose to let the usage 
of appropriate events allow the *plugin* to accomplish much of what the 
original plugin spec defined as features implemented by the API.

For instance, rather than having the plugin manager receive CSS or 
Javascript files from the plugin to be included by Mantis at the 
appropriate time, I offer an EVENT_PAGE_HEAD hook which the plugin can 
use to send CSS or Javascript directly to the client.  Rather than 
declaring menu options it needs to add, it hooks into a menu output 
event to output those menu items itself.  Rather than telling the plugin 
manager what language files it needs to use, the plugin can directly 
load a language file that it needs, or the language API itself will 
simply *look* for a plugin's language files if it can't already find the 
string in its cache.

In reality, this simple plugin manager allows plugins to do anything (if 
not more than) the original spec defined, but it instead places the 
responsibility on plugin developers to use as much or as little of that 
functionality as is required.

This not only reduces the complexity of the plugin manager (which is 
less that 1000 lines including all the management pages), but it reduces 
all the unnecessary overhead, and offers much greater freedoms to the 
plugin authors.

-- 
John Reese
LeetCode.net

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