Hi,
I'm against a CommsManager class, on the grounds I'm against most
other *Manager classes.
They serve as holders for stuff that seems straightforward
initially, but soon become monolithic molochs that make a simple
change, like adding a single method on a single interface, a task of
changing 37 files.
I don't think that any of the region comms currently in region
modules will need to be accessed from application plugins, since
they are region specific.
I would envision a system of application plugins similar to region
plugins, that would expose their own comms interfaces to do the sort
of comms the application, rather than a region, needs to do.
Forcing region comms to go through some CommsManager seems wrong.
Here, I see that specialization is about to be discarded for
convenience, and I don't agree. Region comms, like teleport comms,
don't belong in an application level comms broker, they belong in
region modules. So do most other comms I'm aware of. Take users, fir
instance. The application never talks about users, regions do. The
user server comms really should be a shared region module.
Modularisation is the key here, not centralisation.
Melanie
MW wrote:
> More and more of the Region to UGAIM comms and Region to Region comms, is
> being moved out of the Comms Manager and into region modules. Is this a
> process we should continue and move everything out of there and into Region
> modules?
>
> I'm a bit torn on that issue, and I think a few other people are too. We all
> know the current comms manager system is not the best :) And its a real pain
> to customise.
>
> One issue with having it all in region modules, is that everything has to go
> through regions to be able to use those interfaces. Making it harder for app
> plugins to do any comms related work.
>
> So if we decide to stick with a separate comms system (rather than moving it
> to region modules), how can we improve it?
>
> I think the first two tasks are:
> * to improve the interfaces/make it easier to extend.
> * and to make it so its loaded from plugins/dlls.
>
> One simple way of allowing plugins to create and setup the Comms Manager
> would be making some small changes to the IApplicationPlugin interface:
>
> * Add a PostInitialise method to that interface.
> * Then changing the LoadRegionsPlugin so that it created the regions in the
> IApplicationPlugin.PostInitialise call.
> * Which would allow us to create some SetupCommsManagerPlugins which could do
> its work in the IApplicationPlugin.Initialise() call.
>
> [Note that brings up another issue that I want to deal with in another email
> soon... of how do we define which plugins are loaded. And also if there are
> multiple plugins, of the same type, in a single dll, how do we make some of
> them get loaded but not others?]
>
> The next task would be to improve the interfaces of the Comms Manager and
> allow it to be expanded easier.
>
> The current set of interfaces in the Comms manager are:
>
> public class CommunicationsManager
> {
> public IUserService UserService
> public IMessagingService MessageService;
> public IGridServices GridService
> public UserProfileCacheService UserProfileCacheService
> public IAvatarService AvatarService
> public IAssetCache AssetCache
> public NetworkServersInfo NetworkServersInfo
> public IUserAdminService UserAdminService'
> public BaseHttpServer HttpServer;
> }
>
> I propose making it so the CommsManager also implements the IGridServiceCore
> interface which I've added to the User/Grid/Messaging servers, as part of the
> process of modulising them.
>
> public interface IGridServiceCore
> {
> T Get<T>();
> void RegisterInterface<T>(T iface);
> bool TryGet<T>(out T iface);
> BaseHttpServer GetHttpServer();
> }
>
> Then the components of the CommsManager can register themselves with that,
> and request other interfaces/Components. At the moment it would still need
> the old interfaces to be assigned, as external code use them. But over time,
> we should then change the external code so they use the TryGet<T>(out T
> iface) call when they want one of the interfaces/Components.
>
> So eventually the CommsManager will basically just be that interface and a
> set of "modules" loaded and registered with it.
>
> This brings the CommsManager more in line with the Region module system and
> the IClientCore and soon to be in use UGM servers system. We could even make
> it so it could load the same modules as the UGM servers use if we wanted to.
>
> So thoughts, comments, bad fruit being thrown wanted.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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