Re: [boost] [SoC] Interest of a plugin library

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-13 01:57:33

Mariano Consoni wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I'm a Msc. student. Last years, I've been using boost for a lot of tasks,
> and I liked too much its philosophy.

Hello, welcome :-)

> Aside from that, I've worked some time creating some kind of library/code to
> support the need of plugins in applications. The development went through
> different approaches over the time... and I think that now I have good ideas
> to do a good implementation (using .dll/.so and a framework of callback to
> initialize/destroy plugins and implement the interfaces).
> 
> At least, I think that it works well in Windows and Linux (so maybe it will
> work well in most unices) because I tried some prototypes and I think that
> it could be a great tool for the opensource community (because as far as I
> know, there isn't a library that does this job).
> 
> So I'm writing this email because I want to know if there is interest in the
> community of a project of this type, because I want to participe in
> Boost/SoC and if it isn't interesting I will try to find some other idea.

I think it's a plausible idea although there has already ben some proposal in 
this area.

http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2007/02/117030.php

http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost-extension/

That said, it might make it more reasonable to bring things to completion 
within the SoC time frame, so I wouldn't rule it out at this point.

> I know that "new library" projects maybe are bad seen for SoC, but I think
> that this could be a very concrete project, with short-term useful
> deliverables.

That's really the key.  We will be looking for attainable goals.

> Thanks!
> 
> ps: apart from that, other idea that i've for SoC is a timer pool library,
> similar to SDL's but using boost::threads.

I was thinking there might be something like that is asio already, but I'm not 
seeing it at the moment....

In any case, please do consider applying -- there are lots of possible 
projects and folks are definitely willing to help you get something that will 
work.

Jeff