(rfc) recommend installing a plugin when needed

[Robert Collins]

On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 13:30 -0200, Martin Albisetti wrote:
> On Jan 24, 2008 5:21 AM, Mark Shuttleworth <mark at canonical.com> wrote:
> >    To install a certified plugin, type:
> >
> >       bzr --fetch-plugin pluginname
> 
> This sounds like something that would really help new users.
> Considering the disadvantages of portability, if plugins where
> available as .debs, then apt could be used to solve dependencies and
> do any other customisation plugin would need.
> Of course, having something that would download from HTTP and place it
> in the users plugins/ dir would be much more portable, but harder to
> maintain/develop and risk missing dependencies from external
> libraries.
> 
> All in all, this really seems like it would put bzr even more ahead of
> other VCS in the usability area.

I suggest that:
 - we have the core of bzr support this concept
 - it be hookable so that plugins can be provided in different ways
 - the debian/ubuntu package of bzr depend on a plugin
'bzr-debfetchplugins' which will provide plugin fetching via apt and
kick in when bzr has been installed via debs

This will:
 - make support on windows/gentoo/redhat be cleaner and not bloat bzr's
core (as the .deb support will also not be in the core)
 - avoid a fairly significant race condition if the fetch plugin itself
was out of date :)

-Rob
-- 
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.
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