[Opensim-dev] what are the core region modules? which are not?

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Sean Dague wrote:
> Dahlia Trimble wrote:
>> When a module moves out of core and to forge, what process would be in place
>> to make sure these modules remain compatible when possibly breaking changes
>> are made to core? I use the IRC module in some of my regions and I wouldn't
>> want to see it broken, and I like to stay close to head in all of my regions
>> so I can be more aware of how development progresses. As such I would
>> potentially vote -1 on taking IRC out of core until there is some way to
>> maintain functionality as core evolves.
> 
> I'm personally all for moving thinks to an Optional space, but we have
> to be honest with ourselves, moving a module to the forge means that
> there is a better than 50% chance it's unusable in 2 weeks time.  I
> think for things we've considered "dead" that's fine, but I'd be
> reluctant to push bits out that people do regularly use (like the irc
> bridge).  At least until we have:

I don't think that this is going to be so true in the future.  I've recently written and published an external module 
and though it has been a little painful with the recent reorganization, I don't anticipate all that much breakage in the 
months ahead.  IRC is something else that I think should see reasonable stability.

Admittedly it's much more difficult for modules that get intimate with Scene.  What we need to do in the medium term is 
separate out more interfaces and start to think properly about what should be in them.

However, if we don't suffer the pain of moving some modules out of the tree now then there is little impetus for us to 
get our act together to make all the steps you describe below actually happen.

The alternative to moving stuff out is that we continue to salt up the OpenSim core with our own modules, which makes 
things nice and easy for us, but provides little push for improvement for anybody who isn't in the hallowed circle.

> 
> 1. an easy way to build an out of core module build tree

Actually, this isn't too bad right now.  If you look at the PSMB module you'll see that it's possible to do this with a 
couple of OpenSim dlls (admittedly a couple more than there should be).  There's no need to embed it in the whole 
OpenSim build process.

> 2. network repository support for modules (ala what's in mono addins)

I do think that this is very important in order to produce a good 'almost out of the box' experience, but I don't think 
that it's crucial.

> 3. some type of versioning on module interfaces, so we can know if a
> plugin thinks it can work with the current build

I also think this is very important but not utterly crucial

> 
> Otherwise we are more or less jetisoning a lot of features and reducing
> the number of users that we can serve out of the box.  The same logic
> that would leave these modules in the tree is the same logic that keeps
> all the extra stuff in bin/, to make it easy for the new user to get
> started.
> 
> This shouldn't stop this current level of reorganization, which I think
> is very useful.  But is just a warning on next steps of removing things
> from the tree.
> 
> 	-Sean
> 
> 
> 
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Justin Clark-Casey
http://justincc.wordpress.com