[Geany-Devel] RFC: Proxy plugins

[Matthew Brush]

On 14-05-10 12:56 PM, Thomas Martitz wrote:
> Am 10.05.2014 21:06, schrieb Dimitar Zhekov:
>>> After that I'd say that LibPeas is perhaps something to be considered
>>> for new application but not for our existing codebase. I think we want
>>> something that enables proxy plugins while maintaining API and ABI
>>> stability.
>> peas does does you describe, and provides build-in loaders for Python
>> 2/3 and JavaScript, i.e. standard languages. Please don't throw it away
>> before even trying to adapt it.
>>
>
>
> As you have mentioned, even for C plugins it's a major change, and it
> requires a lot of changes to Geany (doesn't it?).
>
> So why adapt peas when it requires a lot of changes *too* but also
> severely breaks plugin API?
>
> I must be missing something, but it essence it appears to me that
> adapting peas requires no less effort than what I propose (it's not
> actually that much new code, just a lot of refactoring) but also implies
> a major plugin API breakage (while my proposal can be implemented
> without API breakage).
>

I don't think it has to break the existing plugin loader interface, we 
could make a parallel loader that integrates into the current Plugin 
Manager UI and such. Just leave the existing C hooks in place (ie. 
plugins.[c], pluginutils.[c], plugindata.h stuff) and maybe recommend 
people not to use for new plugins. Most of the public API functions 
could still be shared between core, old-style plugins and new-style 
plugins (via some manner of bindings for the non-C ones).

Cheers,
Matthew Brush