[OSM-dev] JOSM Plugin-Manager was: JOSM "simplify way" option

[Robert (Jamie) Munro]

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Shaun McDonald wrote:
> 
> -1 for putting binary plugins into svn.
> 
> +1 for putting a meta file about what plugins are available and where  
> they are located.

Put just the plugin metadata file in svn. Put the plugin downloads on
authors own webspace. If there is a plugin author who doesn't already
have web space, give them an account on dev.

Later we could look at installing something like Apache Gump somewhere
to compile JOSM and all the plugins from SVN. It could manage download
locations and the plugins metadata file. Ideally it would rebuild after
any commit as long as there wasn't another rebuild in progress,
triggered by an svn post-commit hook. Ideally it would build the Mac and
PC installer versions.

In terms of the plugin manager itself, rather than be built into the
JOSM core, it could be a plugin itself, or it could be external, and
could treat the JOSM core as a "plugin" (or at least a jar file to be
updated). The advantage of this approach is that it could probably be
reused by other projects with no modification.

I do think we should evaluate adapting existing plugin download systems
before we start to write our own. Suggested so far have been:

* Java Web Start
* Eclipse
* JEdit

I think we should especially look at Java Web Start as this is already
installed with almost every Java installation, and may just work for us
if we put an XML file up somewhere and a link to it. I'm not sure if it
can manage installing only certain plugins, but we could perhaps do that
by generating the XML server side - i.e. with a form that says "tick
from the list of plugins you want", then it makes a URL to an XML file
with only those plugins installed.

Robert (Jamie) Munro
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