[sldev] Re: Plugin architecture

Rob Lanphier robla at lindenlab.com
Fri Feb 23 20:37:24 PST 2007


Callum,

First, let me pull out the parts that I agree with:

http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.html

I agree that people should read and absorb that.

I also agree that a really, really good thing to do would be to follow
Dale's lead.  Extend the client, figure out how to refactor things so
that it's a clean extension, and integrate the patches.

Now for the rest:

On 2/23/07 7:37 PM, Callum Lerwick wrote:
> The proper thing to do is bless, say, OpenSL as the de-facto non-linden
> fork, and keep everything merged into the OpenSL tree as much as
> possible.
>   
The proper thing for who to do?
> ...this whole plugin thing is hilarious. Everyone's sitting
> around shooting their mouths off about hypotheticals, and no one is
> writing any code.
>   
I agree that a lot of talk and no code can be frustrating.  Some people
are talking because they aren't sure what code to write yet, other
people are talking because that's all they know how to do.  We're all
still getting to know each other, and trying to figure out how to work
together.  Even people who can't code can actually be useful to this
process.  There's no need to be rude.

If you know exactly what needs to be written, then I'd suggest you give
it a shot.  Since we don't really have a consensus at Linden Lab how
plugins should work (that I'm aware of), I'm kinda skeptical that you'd
get it right on the first crack.  If you're up to the job of maintaining
your own fork, fine, but if you expect us to incorporate it, you might
want to check in with us before sinking a ton of time into it.  One
thing that's challenging about this particular piece of functionality is
that Linden Lab would be expected to support whatever emerges for quite
a while, where some people may even expect bug-for-bug compatibility of
the interface in perpetuity.  We don't plan to bend to every unrealistic
expectation of every developer out there, but I think it's fair to
expect at least some degree of interface stability. Therefore, I
seriously doubt that we'd incorporate anything without serious
deliberation on the subject.

Regardless, would you please be respectful and courteous?  The rules for
this mailing list are more or less the same as the forum:
http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=061

Thanks
Rob



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