[Mono-list] nmodule

[Michael Tindal]

Hey everyone,

  Today I released version 0.4 of a library I have been developing
called NModule.  NModule is a generic plug-in framework written for .NET
that abstracts the details of plug-in loading, dependency resolution,
and similar activities away from the application.  NModule does not need
to know how the modules will function, or what API they will provide,
prior to loading them.

  NModule uses "roles" to define what an application needs from modules,
and what modules provide what facilities.  It can be used in an almost
infinite manner.

  This release contains 44 unit tests, all of which pass under Mono (a
patch is needed to fix some PrivatePath issues, available in Mono's
bugzilla, and a link is listed in the release notes included in the
tarball) and should pass under Windows as well (I have not had a chance
to test on Microsoft's runtime yet).

  Full XML documentation is generated using ndoc as part of the build
scripts, and the documentation includes several auxiliary pages to help
explain some key concepts NModule uses.

  Requirements are relatively simple:

    - A .NET runtime (tested on Mono 1.1.8.2 under Fedora Core 4)
    - NAnt 0.85 or greater is required for building the library,        
      creating the documentation, and running the tests.
    - NAntContrib 0.85 or greater is required for running the install
      target.  A diff to allow it to build on Linux is available at
http://dev.gentoo.org/~urilith/overlay/dev-dotnet/nantcontrib/files.

This is the first release I've mentioned beyond the project page, and I
consider it to be "beta" quality.  It passes my unit tests which are
pretty comprehensive, but some of the obscure functionality is not
tested.  I'd appreciate any testing and feedback I can get on this issue
(directly to me for now) as people begin to use this.  I've set up
nmodule-user, nmodule-announce, and nmodule-devel lists tonight and they
should be activated sometime tomorrow (or later today, depending on how
you look at it).

And without further ado, this is where you can a hold of NModule:

Project page:  http://developer.berlios.de/projects/nmodule
Source .tar.bz2: http://download.berlios.de/nmodule/nmodule-0.4.tar.bz2

A spec file for building RPMs is available upon request.

Also, if anyone is interested in maintaining a web page for nmodule, get
in touch with me so we can work something out.

Enjoy everyone, and I look forward to your comments!

Michael Tindal