[MonoDevelop] Ideas for an addin manager

[Jacob Ilsø Christensen]

On 7/5/05, Lluis Sanchez <lluis at ximian.com> wrote:
> > "Enabling/disabling of addins would require restarting MD. Doing it on
> > the fly would be really hard to implement with the current design":
> >
> > It would be cool if we could do it though. Maybe we could do it for
> > some of the addins while others might require restarting MD.
> 
> Maybe we can do it in some cases, but if an addin adds menu entries,
> pads, views, or any other UI element, it will be really hard to do it
> right. It would prolly require a redesign of the whole addin system.

Yes, it would be a bit hard to do.

> 
> >
> > "We need a way of specifying the dependencies of an addin in a
> > declarative way.":
> >
> > Why would we need that? Can we just not examine the assembly as it is
> > to determine the dependencies. Also we might just try and instantiate
> > it inside a try/catch or are things not that simple?
> 
> If we have information about dependencies we can check them even before
> the addin is downloaded from the repository. It's better to show a
> message saying that "the debugger addin can't be
> downloaded/installed/enabled because the Mono debugger is not
> available", than to show an error about "Mono.Debugger.dll not found".

I agree that it is nicer to be able to show such error messages. We
just need an easy way to keep those assembly dependencies in sync.

> We write software for users, not for hackers.

Well, the users of MD are hackers, are they not? :-)

/Jacob 


> >
> > /Jacob
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 7/4/05, Lluis Sanchez <lluis at ximian.com> wrote:
> > > Hi!
> > >
> > > One of the good things of MD addins is that in most of cases they can be
> > > implemented in fully managed code, which means that the same binary can
> > > be safely distributed to any platform that runs MD. I'm writing here
> > > some ideas about how could we take advantage of this.
> > >
> > > >From the user's point of view, I envision the following features:
> > >       * A dialog shows a list of addins installed in MD.
> > >       * The addins can be enabled / disabled.
> > >       * When the user enables an addin, MD checks that the dependencies
> > >         of that addin are installed in the system, and shows an error
> > >         message if they are not.
> > >       * Addins can be downloaded from internet. There is a list of
> > >         addins which are available for download. The list is taken from
> > >         a repository of addins. The user can register new repositories
> > >         by just adding new urls.
> > >       * Addins downloaded from internet can be easily updated when a new
> > >         version is published.
> > >
> > > Now some technical notes:
> > >       * Enabling/disabling of addins would require restarting MD. Doing
> > >         it on the fly would be really hard to implement with the current
> > >         design.
> > >       * We need a way of specifying the dependencies of an addin in a
> > >         declarative way.
> > >       * An addin may depend on other addins.
> > >       * Because of the previous point, MD should take care of making
> > >         sure that addins can find the addin assemblies they depend upon.
> > >       * Some addins will have uncommon unmanaged dependencies, which
> > >         will need to be installed by using whatever system it's Linux
> > >         distribution is based on. This new addin management system would
> > >         not be so useful in this case, but I think that there are many
> > >         other cases in which it would be really useful.
> > >       * If an addin only has managed dependencies (for example, the boo
> > >         compiler), an option would be to package those dependencies
> > >         together with the addin.
> > >       * A repository of addins could be something as simple as an XML
> > >         file with the list of addins (and its dependencies and versions)
> > >         together with gziped assemblies.
> > >       * There would be an "official" MD repository of addins, with the
> > >         optional addins we are not currently shipping.
> > >
> > > Any comment about this?
> > >
> > > BTW, I don't think I'm going to implement this at short term, so if
> > > people agree that something like this is needed and somebody has some
> > > free time, feel free to take it, it shouldn't be too difficult to do,
> > > and looks like fun ;-)
> > >
> > > Lluis.
> > >
> > >
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> > >
> 
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