Re: [Jsynthlib-devel] Separating the synth drivers from JSL (Was: Name for refactored branch)

[William Z. <wrz...@po...>]

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 7:38 AM, Joe Emenaker <jo...@em...> wrote:

> Once I finish this refactor, the next thing I want to set to work on is
> making it so that drivers can be loaded as plugins. This will allow us
> to *not* have to make a new release of JSL in order to get a new driver
> out to the world.
>

Who would such a thing serve?  The core JSL group doesn't need it, since we
can post a new release with the changes.  Outside developers probably won't
use it, because we're still version 0.x, and serious developers will need to
overhaul the core to meet their needs.

That said, a plugin system is not a *bad* thing; it will get us thinking
about stabilizing the API.  But at this point, we have much bigger fish to
fry.


> 1 - Will we want to manage the source for JSL and the drivers
> *separately* at that point? Would we have a branch for every driver, or
> have a branch for *all* of the drivers? Or is there a better way to do
> this than to use branches?
>

We already have trunk/JSynthLib, so:
trunk/drivers/default would build a single plugin containing the current set
of drivers.
trunk/drivers/* would be for developers who have access to JSL's subversion,
but want to maintain their driver separately.

For external developers, they can keep their source wherever they want.


> 2 - How do we want to *distribute* the drivers? What I'm getting at here
> is that I think Brian still has control over jsynthlib.org, but he's
> hardly ever here, so I think there's little chance of us being able to
> store the drivers on his server. Do we want to store them on
> SourceForge? Do we want to store them on my server or someone else's? If
> we store it on someone's server, do we want to use some descriptive
> domain name (like jsldrivers.org or something)?
>

Primary distribution point will be SourceForge for our drivers.  For
external drivers, the external devs will need to arrange hosting initially.
If JSL becomes big and popular, then we can consider building a "3rd Party
Drivers" page on jsynthlib.org.

If we (or Brian) can't update jsynthlib.org, then we'd be better off with a
new product name and domain rather than something silly like jsldrivers.org.

-Bill Zwicky