RE: Plugin interface desing?

FROM : Jesse Grosjean
DATE : Fri Aug 04 19:56:03 2006

> I've read about how to make plugins, and I've written a demo app that
> finds and calls a method on the plugin.  That much I have.  However,
> what I can't seem to locate out there is a good document about how to
> design a plugin interface for various problems.  That is, if I want
> to hand processing off to a plugin, or have it extend the GUI in one
> place, etc. as to what concepts could be employed in the protocol to
> make that easiest.
>
> It's theory, and not proper for a discussion here, but if anyone has
> some links or resources to follow up with, I'd love to see it.


Please take a look at my Blocks plugin framework.

   http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/project/blocks

It's an open source framework for building "pure" plugin architecture 
applications, and I'd love to have other people building off if it. 
Currently all of my applications are built on Blocks, and some people 
have written Blocks plugins to extend my apps, but so far no one else 
has written any Blocks based applications. If anyone is interested 
I'd be happy to get people started.

Blocks is a little different than standard plugin architectures, 
because it's goal is to allow all application functionality to be 
provided by plugin. Your main application become a boot loader for 
the plugin framework, and all other functionality is provided by 
plugins. It's similar (but much smaller and in objective-c) to the 
Eclipse project plugin framework. To be able to do this effectively 
plugins must be able to plug into other plugins. Basically each 
plugin must define the points that it "extends" and may optionally 
define points that other plugins can extends. Then the framework puts 
the application together at runtime.

Blocks has two parts. First there is the core framework (~7 classes 
with no dependencies) for loading plugins. And then there is a set of 
common plugins that will be useful for many apps. For example there 
are plugins for software update functionality, crash reporter, 
preference pane, shareware license...

Anyway take a look, I'd love to get some other application developers 
interested in this project.

Jesse