[ofa-general] Re: [PATCH RFC] opensm/event_plugin: plugin API version 2

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 01:03:33PM -0700, Ira Weiny wrote:
> > Then this will need to track every single data structure or API change.
> > Plugin may require this or not, I prefer to leave this for a writer (at
> > least now).

So what is the point of plugins if:
 - The plugin has access to so much internal state that it must be
   recompiled every time you change virtually any struct in opensm
 - The plugin has no isolation from opensm so it isn't acting as a
   fault containment or simplified API type of thing
 - opensm is BSD licensed anyhow, so this clearly isn't for any
   reasons of GPL avoidance or what have you.

How is this better than just patching opensm directly for people who
want these kinds of things?

You can do alot of good by making the internal APIs 'plug in like' so
adding new things doesn't require touching lots of places without
going down the whole messy road of actual dynamically loadable plug ins..

But if you can't identify a fixed, clean API for a dynamically
loadable plugin then you almost certainly should not have them in an
open source project...

This is probably better long term as far as encouraging more
contribution to opensm rather than encouraging contributions to be
kept as plugins..

Jason