Plugin architecture; was: [sldev] Avatar list ready for testing!

[soft at softnoel.org]

> This assumes that we should accept new plugins on the fly, without
> restarting the client.  I'm not sure that's a reasonable design goal.
> If plugins were totally asynchronous like that, how would you start them
> when SL started?  Or should they sit there as little daemons or services
> whenever the system is booted, just waiting for SL to start?

Tank treads model aside, accepting/enabling/disabling new plugins without
restarting is desirable. It will shorten iteration times for plugin
developers. It will enable restarting the viewer in a plugin-free "safe
mode" and manually reenabling plugins one at a time after a crash. It will
make technologies like self-updating plugins and LL-triggered plugin
invalidation possible.

It's fair to say a plugin should never be activated on the fly without
explicit action by the user, however.