Re: module manager


Subject: Re: module manager
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Tue May 01 2001 - 12:26:33 CDT


At 04:35 PM 5/1/01 +0100, Tomas Frydrych wrote:
>The module manager looks great Dom. Now, should we have some
>mechanism for automatic loading of modules? Perhaps we might
>say that all modules are to be located in AbiSuite/modules, and
>they have to follow certain naming convention, e.g., libAbiMod*. On
>startup we would load all such modules available.

I'm glad to see that we're making headway on low-level XP mechanisms for
locating and loading modules. Could someone comment on which of the
following kinds of dynamic loading these changes are intended to cover?

  http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/01/April/0704.html

I haven't seen any discussion of the specific kinds of discovery APIs we'll
eventually need for modules of a given type, so I suspect that those
problems are still ahead of us, at least.

For example, the existing class factory for instantiating specific imp/exp
implementations would certainly need to be refactored if we wanted to
externalize all that logic. To make that kind of thing Just Work, we'd need
to stop looking for a fixed set of classnames hardwired in static tables
here:

  abi/src/wp/impexp/xp/ie_imp.cpp
  abi/src/wp/impexp/xp/ie_exp.cpp

Ditto for the sets of localization tables hardwired here:

  abi/src/wp/ap/xp/ap_Menu_LabelSet.cpp
  abi/src/wp/ap/xp/ap_Menu_LabelSet_Languages.h
  abi/src/wp/ap/xp/ap_Toolbar_LabelSet.cpp
  abi/src/wp/ap/xp/ap_TB_LabelSet_Languages.h

There are well-known C-based solutions for how to handle this kind of design
problem, but I'm a bit fuzzy on what the C++ analogues, if any, should be.

Paul

PS: These changes are still on fire in Tinderbox -- something about
inability to access a private destructor. Is anyone already looking into
that, or are more eyes needed?



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