[sldev] Re: Plugin work so far.

[Argent Stonecutter]

These comments seem related, so I'll comment on them together.

> Unfortunately, everything keeps twisting back into a requirement to
> call code in the main code base.   This might be doable for simple
> classes that are stateless, however I am concerned that at some point
> it starts getting more complicated, less stable, less cross platform
> and more crash prone.
>
> If we do export functions to be used in the Plugin DLLs, we may want
> to export C methods only rather than C++ classes.

This would also make gluing the plugin code to other languages  
(especially scripting languages) infinitely easier.

Continuing on to Soft Noel's comment, then. I think that plugin  
initialization and callback should use as language-independant and  
API as possible, and ironically these days that lowest common  
denominator happens to be a programming language called C. No  
classes, just "old fashioned structs" and pointers to old fashioned  
functions.

I agree that explicitly registering hooks is definitely the way to  
go, but the hooks really need to use some kind of formal  
encapsulation of parameters. I suggested one, but it seems that  
Linden Labs has one already so we should use it.