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

[Sasha Khapyorsky]

On 04:36 Mon 30 Jun     , Hal Rosenstock wrote:
> 
> If this idea catches on, aside from exposing the internals in an
> unstructured manner, I see a mix and match issue with plugins developing
> which may lead to certain OpenSM versions being selected for
> compatibility or worse no choice due to plugin version compatibility as
> they get to support whatever versions they choose.

As we learned recently having structured API leads to such problems just
well, in this case one can expect "stable API" even if it was never
declared.

I think I agree with Ira - OpenSM version exact match enforcement will
make it clearer that plugin writer should be ready to rebuild and
possibly update its code.

> Might this be better handled as packaging with separate packages based
> on licenses ?

What do you mean?

> > > 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..
> 
> I think this is safer from an engineering and support standpoint.
> 
> > GPL is some sort of an issue - OFA requires dual licensing, so GPL only
> > code cannot enter OpenSM.
> 
> Yes, OFA licensing is dual BSD and GPL. Perhaps some modification is
> needed to handle this scenario for OpenSM better. Was that
> entertained/explored ?

Not by me.

Sasha