Jimmie, the first thing you should do is RTFM; in the VMMakerTool,
press the help button. Really, it helps :-)

VMMaker does not build any plugins that have declared that they need
outside, handwritten, code unless it finds some evidence of that code
existing. The current simple test is to look for a directory of a
suitable name. The path to that code is by default {working
dir}/platforms. It can be changed easily in the VMMTool. Similarly the
default path for the generated sources is {working dir}/src and it too
can be altered.

So far as I know there are no technical reasons to prefer internal
plugins over external nor vice versa. I have heard arguments that it is
easier to get users to install things corectly when all/most plugins are
internal because then they are all in the one file. For OSs with
sensible bundling mechanisms this is moot. The *nix makefile seems to
cope well with any mix since the shell code can detect the directories
and assemble the appropriate rules. Acorn builds everything external,
Mac uses almost all internal and a couple external and so on. 


tim
--
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Strange OpCodes: ESR: Emulate Slide Rule