[Geany-Devel] RFC: Proxy plugins

[Dimitar Zhekov]

On Fri, 09 May 2014 12:29:58 +0200
Thomas Martitz <kugel at rockbox.org> wrote:

> >> The basic idea is that proxy plugins initially call a Geany API to
> >> register themselves as proxies, providing criterias to select potential
> >> plugins (for now, this is only a list of file extensions)
> >> Geany will match files against these criterias and, on match, call into
> >> the plugin for the first time.
> 
> What???
> 
> No, this isn't about loading plugins on demand. This is about 
> implementing APIs so that plugins (probably selected in the PM dialog) 
> can act as a proxy to plugins written in other languages (also selected 
> in the PM dialog). I do not intend to change the user experience w.r.t. 
> to plugins: All plugins, regardless of the language, are user-selected 
> in the PM dialog and loaded only then and on subsequent startups.

So then, the only remaining option seems that Geany will search the
plugin paths, and match the found file extensions. It's unclear what
call returns the sub-plugin metadata (name, version etc.), but that's
solvable.

Unless we are trying to enable scripting in more than a few languages,
I see no reason for all these complications. Let the master Foo plugin
search for and probe the found .foo files, display a list of them, and
save the list of selected ones in it's own configuration, without
involving Geany. I'd like to have 100 useful python (lua, js, ...)
scripts or macros, and will probably write my own, but certainly don't
want them as first class plugins.

As another option, we can declare one scripting language as official,
support the language binding for it, and provide the command console.
Vim, emacs and gdb have one, so why should the light IDE Geany
support N of them? And whoever wants to write a plugin to supports his
or her favorite REXX/VBScript/younameit is still free to do so.

Personally I'd choose a language that supports GTK+, *nix and Windows,
for obvious reasons.

-- 
E-gards: Jimmy