[SrcML] new plugin system

[Frank R. <fra...@in...>]

Just a quick update on the new plugin system:

All modules in CVS have been adjusted for the new system by now and all
plugins are now placed in their own directories. I've also modified the
build.xml scripts in order to reduce the amount of manual labor required
to get things going again. (Make sure you update with "cvs update -d" to
also get the new directories)

Documentation for the new plugin system is already available in the SrcML
Wiki on srcml.de and of course you can see how it works by checking out
config/PluginManager.java . Right now we don't yet have an implementation
for the dependency graph and the automatic loading of the dependency
plugins. But Simon should be able to add that within the next week.

Note that this is not related to the previous API discussions (about whether
or not the API will be pluggable), but was needed simply because the old
plugin system was unsatisfying. With the new system a plugin is really
independent from the applications (unless of course you develop your own
application and need to access specific methods in the plugin class which
are not available for all plugins of that type). Plugins can now be published
separately as .jar files and the installation consists of copying that file
into ~/.srcml/plugins/ . That's all there is to it. The PluginManager will
take care of making the plugin available then. 

For more details and usage examples take a look at the wiki documentation
or reply to the mailinglist.

-- 
Raiser, Frank
Student @ University of Ulm (www.uni-ulm.de)

You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and 
make mistakes, make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find
success - on the far side of failure. (Thomas J Watson Sr)