On 28-Mar-06, at 11:04 AM, Marcus Denker wrote:
>
> As for the vm-plugin: I think you just need to get the kedama  
> plugin and put
> it into the path where the other plugins are and it should work.
That *should* be generally true. The plugin mechanism was designed to  
allow for internal and external plugins and all of them should work  
either way. For example, win32 VMs are typically delivered with all  
plugins made internal and this linked into the single .exe file. This  
is done because we know most win32 users are going to be terribly  
confused by a large number of files and wold probably delete most of  
them and then complain about stuff not working. Mac VMs come with  
most plugins made internal but some as external, which is probably  
historical - the osx bundle idea makes it easy to have a large  
collection of files hidden in what looks like a single file. The RISC  
OS vm application comes with all plugins external and uses the  
original application bundle idea to hide all the complexity. The unix  
vm... ech, I don't have the patience to care about unix anymore.

Note that an external plugin will override an internal one; so we can  
distribute bug fixes in plugins by sticking an external copy of (say)  
FilePlugin in the right place and next time FilePlugin is *loaded*  
the external one will be found and bound in. Note the *loaded*  
qualifier. If you are running an image that has done anything to use  
FilePlugin then the plugin is bound and you would have to explicitly  
unload it - SmalltalkImage current unloadModule: 'FilePlugin' -  
before it could be replaced with the new version. Plugins are  
*supposed* to be unloadable but I'd bet there is at least one that  
isn't, just on general principles.

>
> To have it part of VMaker, Yoshiki would needs to coodinate that with
> Tim, if he's interested in having the plugin be part of the  
> standard vm.
In general if a plugin is reasonably stable and reasonably broadly  
useful then it would be sensible to add it to the VMMaker package. A  
plugin still in early stages of development and undergoing rapid  
changes would not be a good candidate. A plugin for connecting to an  
obscure database only used by tapeworm biologists in Elbonia would  
probably not be.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Make sure your code "does nothing" gracefully.