(rfc) recommend installing a plugin when needed

[James Westby]

On Mon, 2008-01-28 at 18:48 -0200, Martin Albisetti wrote:
> On Jan 28, 2008 5:21 PM, James Westby <jw+debian at jameswestby.net> wrote:
> > As there is going to be a central place to store this information
> > then I don't think exporting it buys us much. Also I don't think there
> > is that much information required from the plugin is there? For instance
> > the list of commands is easily findable.
> 
> I was thinking for plugins that aren't installed through the official
> repository on this one too.
> If they export certain information, we can manage them too (like what
> it's update URL is or a description of what it does)
> 

If you are doing a lightweight checkout then you can just "bzr update"
to update. A plugins already provides the description as it's module
docstring, and it can also provide it's current version.

If you find other information that would be useful then we can look
at exporting it as well.

> 
> > I would only suggest reconsidering XML. I don't think it's needed, but
> > I won't stand in your way; I will mention it just this once. However
> > I think it is important to consider how to handle format changes for
> > this file, and XML may make this easier.
> 
> I'm not a fan of XML's bloat or complicated parsing either. It just
> seems like it would be much more flexible than parsing a text file.
> I'm very open to adopt a different approach to this.

One reason I was suggesting something else is the cost of importing
an XML parsing library. Currently this isn't much of an issue, as
bzrlib does this already. However if bzr were to move away from XML
representations then it may become an issue. However the import
could always be demand loaded, avoiding the impact when the parser
isn't used. However I think it is a minor issue, and so you should
go with whatever provides the most benefit.

Thanks,

James