On Fri, Nov 16, 2007 at 06:13:32PM +0100, Bernd Schmidt wrote: > I must admit I don't understand the upside. I've always thought of > plugins as something proprietary programs need because their source > isn't open.
On the contrary, many successful free programs have plugins. Consider Emacs. The user can extend the editor using a Turing-complete extension language (elisp), and commands in the extension language have the same status as native commands in C. Consider Firefox. Again, there are vast numbers of useful extensions. They allow users to customize the tool in ways that the core developers wouldn't necessarily want to support. > In my view, plugins will bitrot quickly as GCC's interface changes; and > they won't even help with the learning curve - does anyone believe for a > second you won't have to understand compiler internals to write a plugin? A poorly-designed plugin architecture would rot quickly. A well-designed architecture would require maintainance, but not as much work to keep up (Firefox plugins often require changes to keep up with new versions).
