[kepler-dev] More on packaging / organizing Kepler

[Chad Berkley]

hey shawn,

In general I think the plugin architecture is good.  I'm unclear though 
on which parts of kepler (currently) you think should be made into 
plugins for ptolemy.  Right now we basically just have a bunch of actors 
and a coouple of small gui extensions, i.e. nothing I would consider 
worthy of a plugin architecture.  I'm sure we can find a use for this in 
the future though, like for the ecogrid query/read/write stuff.  The 
ptolemy arch is already pretty accomodationg to adding new features and 
has many layers of abstraction to accomodate overriding classes.  Is 
there a specific part of ptolemy/kepler that you would like to be able 
to plug components into?

chad

Shawn Bowers wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I was wondering if there was any motivation to create a version of 
> Ptolemy that allowed for "plug-ins" (e.g., like in many Microsoft 
> products, Mozilla, and Protege, which has *many* very nice and fairly 
> complex plug-ins that have been created by various groups).
> 
> It seems like this would solve a number of problems: (1) it wouldn't 
> force Kepler to keep a separate Ptolemy branch (i.e., everytime a new 
> Ptolemy version came out, Kepler would need to be reworked); (2) the 
> Ptolemy source would not need to be included with Kepler; (3) different 
> organizations could develop their own plug-ins and suite of plug-ins; 
> (4) it would reduce much of the management burden from Kepler 
> developers; and (5) it would minimize backward compatibility issues 
> (unless a new Ptolemy release forced this).
> 
> In general, it is my understanding that the Kepler extensions (at least 
> currently) do not require changes to Ptolemy and are really "extensions" 
> -- if this holds so that the plug-in model is feasible, I think it would 
> be a much more elegant solution to many of the current problems.
> 
> Anyway, I am not a Kepler developer, just an outside observer, but I 
> just wanted to throw the idea out there.
> 
> Shawn
> 
> 
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