Re: plugin dependencies

Jay Levitt
Wed, 19 Sep 2007 15:28:49 -0000

On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:03:09 +0200, Michael Koziarski wrote:

> We''re still pretty skeptical about plugin dependencies on the
whole.
> Plugins monkeypatching plugins seems like a bit of a recipe for
> disaster.  However we could do something easy like:
>
> config.plugins = [:gems, :some_kind_of_thing, :all]
>
> So you specify the key things at the beginning of the array, then just
> use :all to mean ''then everything else in alphabetical
order''.

That still means that plugins aren''t really plug-in anymore.  If I use
a
plugin that needs acts_as_list at initialization, and that plugin happens
to be named "aardvark" instead of "zebra", I''ll
have to go manually add
acts_as_list to the beginning of config.plugins?  Why not just manually
copy the plugin code into lib/ as well?

I understand the core team''s traditional reluctance to add plugin
dependencies, for both complexity and YAGNI reasons.  I remember a ticket a
while back where somebody said "But if I have 70 plugins, it becomes a
pain", and DHH rightly responded "You don''t need 70
plugins".

But with the move towards pushing more and more core functionality into
plugins, it really should be revisited - if only to be re-argued in the
present tense.  I''m working on a relatively small app on Edge that
already
uses a dozen plugins, and we''ve just gotten started.  I don''t
think that''s
going to be uncommon.

--
Jay Levitt                |
Boston, MA                | My character doesn''t like it when they
Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit.
http://www.jay.fm         | - Kristoffer