Blow WindowPlugins.dll to separate plugin DLLs (4 Viewers)

[elliottmc]

@seco
Please don't get me wrong. I'm not making any judgement about whether this change should be included. I usually try to keep my nose out of such discussions. I just happened to be browsing this thread and saw your comment about recompiling. Again, please feel free to ignore my comment if it is off topic.

No, I did not get you wrong I was also suggesting that we should maybe postpone this to 1.8.0 but then again we might encounter merge hell so the sooner we get this out for testing and released the better. But it's not my decision.

1.6.0 broke plugins also.

I fear that if we don't merge this for 1.7.0, it will get so much harder to merge to the point where we lose the will to do it, and it becomes one of many branches we have that would be great to include but too much effort.

If we do merge this, there is absolutely no chance that a plugin will be able to support 1.6.0 and 1.7.0 in a single binary version, right?

Personally I don't see any reason for users not to run the latest version. Did we break anything so badly in 1.6.0 that a significant number of users don't want to upgrade? Even if this is the case (which I don't think it is), presumably those users would also be happy with the older versions of the plugins, so we would encourage community plugin developers to focus on the latest and greatest. It seems that many people are spending a lot of effort supporting older versions of software (which we do to some extent with the OS, including XP support which we have now ditched).

 

[elliottmc]

Many devs can't make single plugin dll compatible with both 1.5.0 and 1.6.0 anymore.

Would there be a reason to not have users upgrade to 1.6 anyway? It's not uncommon to see software not supporting older versions anymore, especially if it's free of charge like MediaPortal.

Not uncommon or not common?

 

[Edalex]

Many devs can't make single plugin dll compatible with both 1.5.0 and 1.6.0 anymore.

Would there be a reason to not have users upgrade to 1.6 anyway? It's not uncommon to see software not supporting older versions anymore, especially if it's free of charge like MediaPortal.

It's from plugin dev side. Not everyone will want to maintain two separate plugin projects.
Also not all users are IT geeks and need to update to every new build I think. I hope it's common. But updating plugins frequently is normal

Many devs can't make single plugin dll compatible with both 1.5.0 and 1.6.0 anymore.

ouch.. do they need help?

It's technically impossible to build against 1.6.0. plugin dlls compatible with 1.5.0. So only way to make them work in both 1.5.0. and 1.6.0 is to compile them against 1.5.0 dlls and hope that their signature was not changed in 1.6.0. I think I can't understand myself what I just wrote

 

[HTPCSourcer]

Not uncommon or not common?

Too many negations

What I mean is that once a new version is out, support for older versions is dropped. BAsically what you are saying.

 

[elliottmc]

It's technically impossible to build against 1.6.0. plugin dlls compatible with 1.5.0. So only way to make them work in both 1.5.0. and 1.6.0 is to compile them against 1.5.0 dlls and hope that their signature was not changed in 1.6.0. I think I can't understand myself what I just wrote

So in a way, the damage has been done, and hopefully we are now dealing only with currently maintained plugins that are compatible with 1.6.0.

@seco - I suspect that this will be a question that doesn't have a straightforward answer, but I'll ask you anyway. How long do you think it will take a competent plugin developer with a 1.6.0 compatible plugin to make it compatible with 1.7.0 if we include this branch? Is it a 5 minute job, or will it take an hour, or longer?

 

[Sebastiii]

5 min if plugin ready with net4

 

[seco]

So in a way, the damage has been done, and hopefully we are now dealing only with currently maintained plugins that are compatible with 1.6.0.

@seco - I suspect that this will be a question that doesn't have a straightforward answer, but I'll ask you anyway. How long do you think it will take a competent plugin developer with a 1.6.0 compatible plugin to make it compatible with 1.7.0 if we include this branch? Is it a 5 minute job, or will it take an hour, or longer?

Basically it should be minutes since the code has only moved from place to another. I think a bigger job is the release process of the plugin which is different depending on the dev.

I don't know how many plugins have dependency to MP plugin(s). But after this maybe we should have a submodule which should be used if a plugin depends on MP plugin(s).

EDIT: Maybe we already have correct subsystem:
[assembly: SubsystemVersion("MP.Plugins", "1.1.6.27644")]

So we bump this and hope that plugins that use MP plugins have this subsystem defined

 

[seco]

It looks like for example TVSeries don't have proper subsystems defined at all so it will not show as incompatible even though it should if we bump MP.Plugins (and MP.Plugins.Videos)

So in any case we are damned if we do and damned if we don't

 

[edterbak]

Gheheheh If we're damned anyway, lets try to go forward in the mean time...

 

[azzuro]

so, this rework is not planned for 1.7 ?