Re: Plugin RFC

The support for builtin plugins is now in, this hopefully concludes
the new buildsystem project that was started about one year ago.

Here is some information about the new stuff:

* As Dom said, we have a list of default plugins set in configure.in,
at the moment this regards only the opendocument plugin. For switching
off the default plugins the following option is provided:
    --disable-default-plugins

* Plugins can be built as loadable modules. The list of desired
plugins must be passed as an escaped string, like so:
    --enable-plugins="foo bar baz"

* It is also possible to disable plugin loading support, which saves
about 0.7M in size of the executable, a feature originally implemented
by Tomas to optimise for embedded devices. Use to following option if
desired:
    --disable-plugins

* Finally, the new option to statically link plugins into the
executable. This feature was prototyped by FJF back then and works
independently of the plugin loading support described above. Mind that
(1) this takes precedence over loadable plugins, if mentioned twice
the plugin is linked statically. (2) Only plugins that require a
subset of abiword's own shared library dependencies can be linked
statically. This is checked at configure time. Currently there is /no/
sanity check that prevents double loading. A builtin plugin can be
loaded again from a shared module, so keep your prefix clean. Use
     --enable-builtin-plugins="foo bar baz"

I hope this gives downstream packagers and distributors some room to
tailor abiword to their (users') liking.

- Rob
Received on Fri Apr 11 14:03:33 2008