[osmosis-dev] Plugins

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Brett Henderson wrote:
> On a semi-related issue, do these jar file names have to match exactly?

And on a distantly-related issue, is it really necessary to have a 
plugin mechanism where you have write XML files and encapsulate stuff in 
zip files and use all this JPF overhead?

I know JOSM is not known for its elegant architecture but in JOSM, all 
you have to do to create a plugin is extend the Plugin class, put the 
jar file in the plugins directory, and add the name of the jar file to a 
config option, a process that has been understood and mastered by 
countless people who weren't Java buffs.

In JOSM, writing a plugin is only marginally more complex than writing 
the class and integrating it into JOSM directly. What I see here does 
not exactly encourage me to write plugins for Osmosis; it seems that it 
is going to be much less hassle simply adding an action to Osmosis 
proper than encapsulating the same in a plugin.

Maybe it looks different for people who had prior JPF exposure. What are 
the advantages of using this over just loading the jar file and 
instantiating the class like JOSM does it?

Bye
Frederik