[Vm-dev] plugin location
David T. Lewis
lewis at mail.msen.com
Thu Aug 27 03:22:12 UTC 2009
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 07:16:42PM -0700, Ian Piumarta wrote:
>
> Does anyone use the plugin mechanism to load libraries that are not
> plugins on Unix? Or to override just one or two of the installed
> ones from a user directory?
>
> I'm thinking of simplifying the search strategy (which is indeed
> broken w.r.t. overriding installed plugins as Subbu points out) along
> with all the junk related to probing for a zillion prefixes and
> suffixes. Unlike libtool, CMake manages to build loadable modules
> with predictable 'lib*.so' names regardless of the platform. That,
> combined with a launch script that can add a -plugins option to the
> VM args, suggests it ought to be possible to find the plugin
> precisely on the first attempt, without having to search at all.
>
> The advantage is vastly simpler logic that is completely predictable.
>
> The disadvantage is that it will not be possible to subvert the
> plugin mechanism to load system libraries, and it will not be
> possible to override the installed plugins with a single plugin built
> in a different directory. Would either of these be a noticeable loss?
Predictable and easy to understand is more important than convenience,
so it sounds like a net win to me.
I like being able to work on a plugin that I can build and run from
a local build directory (cd ./build; make; ./squeak myimage) and have
it find the plugin in the ./build directory. I also like to be able
to run my ./build/squeak under gdb for debugging the plugin. It's nice
if that mechanism continues to work but not essential.
Dave
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