[Opensim-dev] Module/Plugin Loading

[Sean Dague]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 01:28:41PM +0100, Michael Wright wrote:
> This isn't about forking opensim, its about making opensim flexible.
> 
> We don't want one way of things working. We don't want every module to
> have to use Mono.addins via a config.xml or whatever. If a application
> wants to set a group of modules from the code that don't get loaded
> through some plugin system, then it should be able to. The current
> plugin system allows this. We should make changes that make things
> less flexible. Yes the current plugin system is far from ideal, but
> neither is hardcoding a set way of it working.

I think ryan's proposal remains very flexible.  All the flexibility in
OpenSim today in it's plugin system actually makes stuff very
confusing.  While that's ok to navigate for people that wrote the code,
it definitely hampers getting more people in.  The simple act of
starting to consolidate UUID string formats brought out a lot of people
that had found the old model too confusing and just gave up on the
project.  Some of them are now coming back into the fold. :)

> Btw, I think the little dig with the fork comment was out of line. We
> are not forking anything. We are creating applications based on
> opensim. Which was always and is the purpose of opensim. Its not meant
> to be a big monolithic project that just is a SL clone. Although it is
> aiming more in that direction lately.
> 
> If OpenSim doesn't support people taking it and using it as a base for
> other applications, and them modifying the parts they need to. And is
> now just meant to be a single application that functions as a SL clone
> Then its no longer anything like the project I started and thats a
> very sorry state for it to end up in.

Using in other applications is definitely ideal.  My comment mostly
comes from the fact that we shouldn't restrict changes in the core
source based based on components not in the core.  The plug points that
exist today aren't a binary interface that is crystalized forever.  This
project is still evolving.

Preventing forward progress on something as important as getting 1 way
to write a plugin (so you don't need to learn 4 different ways to write
1 plugin for OpenSim) because someone has out of tree code based on the
old model seems against this spirit of constant evolution.

    -Sean

-- 
__________________________________________________________________

Sean Dague                                       Mid-Hudson Valley
sean at dague dot net                            Linux Users Group
http://dague.net                                 http://mhvlug.org

There is no silver bullet.  Plus, werewolves make better neighbors
than zombies, and they tend to keep the vampire population down.
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