Re: Plugin interface desing?
Re: Plugin interface desing?
- Subject: Re: Plugin interface desing?
- From: Adam Knight <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 13:53:40 -0500
I actually saw that, downloaded it, and played with it. It's a lot
to take in, really. Happen to have a sample app and code done up
with that codebase? I really liked the idea, but couldn't get around
it.
--
Adam Knight
If you're not going to stop and appreciate the scenery, you're not
going to
enjoy Myst. The same thing applies on the Mac as well. -- Rand Miller
On Aug 4, 2006, at 12:56 PM, Jesse Grosjean wrote:
I've read about how to make plugins, and I've written a demo app that
finds and calls a method on the plugin. That much I have. However,
what I can't seem to locate out there is a good document about how to
design a plugin interface for various problems. That is, if I want
to hand processing off to a plugin, or have it extend the GUI in one
place, etc. as to what concepts could be employed in the protocol to
make that easiest.
It's theory, and not proper for a discussion here, but if anyone has
some links or resources to follow up with, I'd love to see it.
Please take a look at my Blocks plugin framework.
http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/project/blocks
It's an open source framework for building "pure" plugin
architecture applications, and I'd love to have other people
building off if it. Currently all of my applications are built on
Blocks, and some people have written Blocks plugins to extend my
apps, but so far no one else has written any Blocks based
applications. If anyone is interested I'd be happy to get people
started.
Blocks is a little different than standard plugin architectures,
because it's goal is to allow all application functionality to be
provided by plugin. Your main application become a boot loader for
the plugin framework, and all other functionality is provided by
plugins. It's similar (but much smaller and in objective-c) to the
Eclipse project plugin framework. To be able to do this effectively
plugins must be able to plug into other plugins. Basically each
plugin must define the points that it "extends" and may optionally
define points that other plugins can extends. Then the framework
puts the application together at runtime.
Blocks has two parts. First there is the core framework (~7 classes
with no dependencies) for loading plugins. And then there is a set
of common plugins that will be useful for many apps. For example
there are plugins for software update functionality, crash
reporter, preference pane, shareware license...
Anyway take a look, I'd love to get some other application
developers interested in this project.
Jesse
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