Difference between revisions of "OpenTasks"

OpenTasks (view source)

Revision as of 20:41, 28 February 2007

1,898 bytes added , 20:41, 28 February 2007

→‎Improved plugins code

Fingolfin

1,079

edits

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 == Improved plugins code ==
-* support for Windows (by avoiding backlinking)
+ScummVM contains by now over a dozen different engines for different adventure game systems. Each of these engines forms a "plugin", and it is possible to compile these plugins as loadable modules separate from the core of ScummVM itself. This makes it possible to (un)load engine code at will, ideal for systems with tight memory constraints: If you want to play a game, you only need to load the engine for that specific game, and can unload the others.
-* allow mixing static & dynamic plugins
-* allow loading plugins form a configurable system-wide place.
+We always compile the engines as "plugins", but by default, they are compiled as so-called "static" plugins -- these are not real plugins, but rather the engine gets compiled into the application (i.e. "static linked", hence the name), but is still treated by the rest of the application as a plugin (only that it is not dynamically loaded). Support for true "dynamic" plugin is only available on a subset of all plugins -- essentially most POSIX systems (including Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X) and the Dreamcast.
+There are various ways in which this plugin code could be improved:
+* Add support for real "dynamic" plugins on Windows. This is currently not possible, because the ScummVM plugins rely on "backlinking" from the loaded modules to the core binary. This is not supported on Windows. There are various ways to solve this issue (use Google for more info). This is further complicated by the fact that while the interface of the *plugins* is well-defined (although not quite as well documented -- see base/plugins.h), the converse is not true -- plugins can call virtually arbitrary code within the core of ScummVM
+* Add support for "dynamic" plugins on more systems which might benefit from them.
+* Improve the way we search for plugins. Right now we only look in the current directory. Should this be made configurable? On Unix, maybe /use/share/scummvm should be searched, too? On Mac OS X, the CoreFoundation bundle API should be used to search for plugins inside the ScummVM.app bundle (which would also required the build system to be enhanced to properly bundle all plugins). Etc.
 == Mixer improvements ==