[Geany-Devel] RFC: Proxy plugins

[Dimitar Zhekov]

On Fri, 09 May 2014 20:34:18 +0200
Thomas Martitz <kugel at rockbox.org> wrote:

> Am 09.05.2014 19:15, schrieb Dimitar Zhekov:
> > On Fri, 09 May 2014 12:29:58 +0200
> > Thomas Martitz <kugel at rockbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > Unless we are trying to enable scripting in more than a few languages,
> > I see no reason for all these complications. [...]
> 
> I accept that the status-quo is fine for you, but not for me and others. 
> IRC discussions repeatedly indicated that proxy plugins are the way to 
> go (the alternative is automagic bindings through gobject introspection 
> which isn't feasible right now).

I don't know the way to go, but there are two things we should not do:

1. Change the interface radically, gedit-style.

2. Introduce serious code changes that won't benefit the users. Proxy
plugins may be beneficial at some future point, or we may end up with
several poorly-supported languages, and later with unmaintained proxies
we dare not remove because that'll kill their sub-plugins.

> I suspect we would support 1 (or at most 2) proxy plugins ourself.

I hope by "we" you mean the core plugins. Otherwise, that's no "support"
at all.

> Other 
> proxy plugins can be maintained by third parties out of tree or in 
> geany-plugins. I do not want to hard-limit the language choice to our 
> blessed one though.

The other proxy plugins will be DOA, except for mini-plugins (macros,
scripts) that suit single users. Why should one bother to write a
serious, mass-distributable sub-plugin in a 3rd party language, when
there are official ones? To risk the proxy plguin being unmaintained?

-- 
E-gards: Jimmy