[Opensync-devel] Could we have several versions of a plugin configuration file?

[Henrik /K. <he...@ka...>]

Dear all,

A member of a group has a configuration file.
The default configuration file comes from the plugin.
E.g. http://opensync.org/browser/plugins/mozilla-sync/trunk/src/mozilla-sync

Frontends may use the default configuration file to show a nice GUI.
This could include GUI for AdvancedOptions, and GUI for selecting 
specific Resources.

Would it be possible to implement some mechanism, which would allow us 
to have more than one default configuration file per plugin?

This would make sense, if different versions of a plugin supports 
different AdvancedOptions, different Resources, etc.
In particular, it would make a lot of sense for external plugins, where 
the OpenSync SVN only contains configuration files, but the actual code 
is hosted, build and distributed somewhere else.
Several different default configuration files could be included in 
OpenSync, and OpenSync could select the appropriate configuration file 
depending on the actual external plugin version.

As an example: Future versions of mozilla-sync may support only vformat, 
whereas the current version supports xml-format.
It would be great if OpenSync could carry different configuration files 
for this, and select the correct one depending on the actual blueZync it 
is connecting to.

I could of course create just one default configuration file with both 
Formats, but a GUI would not be able to figure out that this particular 
version of the external plugin will only support one of them.

Daniel has already described how this is done for capabilities.
See http://old.nabble.com/xml-file-with-capabilities-td25978588.html

I was wondering if we could do something similar for the default 
configuration file.

As far as I can see, the challenge is, that the capabilities file is 
read AFTER discover, and it is discover which sets the version 
information used to select the appropriate capabilities.
On the other hand, the default capabilities file would be needed BEFORE 
discover.

I have never figured out what the plugin's get_version is used for. 
Could it be used here?

Any comments on this would be most appreciated.

/Henrik