[sldev] SSE2 / Ouch

[Kelly Linden]

Dzonatas wrote:
> Face it... there is too much hardware out there for a
> one-shot-get-it-right-for-all.  I believe this only proves that the
> "release early, release often" philosophy doesn't work as well as
> people have touted.
>
> I agree with the asynchronous updates. It be *extremely cool* that
> when you enter regions that you have to download a viewer plug-in
> update in order to access all the features of those regions. This
> could translate to something like many different versions of
> "viewer_region.dll" files being found on the resident's Second Life
> directory. (where "region" is replaced with the name of the region
> that they are at).
>
> [I know I'm going to hear it now... "but that makes border crossing
> slow!" heh... ]
I don't think this is ever the plan, really.  Instead your client will
just work on all versions of the server being used.  Sort of like the
web - it doesn't matter what version of apache or php etc. a server is
running, your version of firefox just works (although maybe it won't
support feature Foo).  While 1.18 does a lot to remove the connection
between viewer and server, it does not yet support running multiple
server versions on the grid at once.  That feature set is currently in
heavy development with several milestones some of which should be making
their way to Agni "Soon(tm)" after 1.18.  Those features will really
enable amazing things like testing new server code by rolling out to
increasingly larger subsets of the main grid, allowing estate owners to
decide when (and sometimes if!) to upgrade server versions etc. 
Exciting stuff, and please do pester Zero Linden at his office hours for
more information.  :)

Dynamically loading plugins based on region is a path frought with
peril.  While it may be a good idea some day, there is a LOT of design
work involved and many security issues.  Especially after the sim is
open sourced.  Even then this will probably center around the currently
non-existent plugin system and not offer dynamic loading of core
modules, require confirmation dialogs etc. etc. etc.

 - Kelly