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

[Frederik Ramm]

Hallo,

> * plugins depend on other plugins, ensure that they are available and 
> loaded before.
> 
> * so we need versioning in plugins/JOSM to be able to define the plugin 
> dependencies

I see problems there.

JOSM doesn't have a very strict plugin interface. It has many public 
member variables all over the place, so that plugins can do virtually 
anything and are not restricted to doing things that the JOSM authors 
thought plugins might want to do.

This has been a design choice by Imi, and is very much in line with the 
spirit of the rest of this project (don't do complex designs beforehand, 
just leave it as open as possible and the community will make something 
good of it).

Replacing this openness in JOSM with a catalogue of things a plugin may 
or may not do, and interfaces to go along with that, would make JOSM and 
the plugins more complex and reduce the play room for people developing 
plugins.

But without such strict interfacing rules, we will never ever be able to 
formulate dependencies correctly. The only thing that I as a plugin 
writer can say is that my plugin works with the JOSM version I wrote it 
against. I can never be sure that it will work with future or past 
versions, and that it will not break other plugins (or be broken by them).

Because of this, we will not be able to have automatic procedures 
dealing with plugins and dependencies. You can say something depends on 
something else, but you can never say which version. Any attempt at 
automatically downloading things runs the risk of downloading 
non-matching things, and is sure to alienate the user who expects that 
if the machine automatically downloads stuff, it will surely work.

I suggest we add something to the plugins allowing them to advertise a 
version or build number, and we put a machine-readable list of plugins, 
current versions, and download locations somewhere. Then the user can be 
shown a list of what he has and what's available, and any further 
decision is his own.

(We might of course also do it the Microsoft way, using a web service 
where the current configuration is uploaded, and which responds with a 
custom-tailored list. This would have the advantage of being able to 
spot certain problematic things - "I see you are using plugin X version 
0.23 together with JOSM 0.87 which is a known problem configuration..." 
- but the user would have to sacrifice a bit of privacy for that. And 
then comes JOSM Genuine Advantage...)

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'