[PD-dev] creating a flext library

[guenter geiger]

On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Thomas Grill wrote:

> > I would discourage writing a library. It is much better
> > and much more flexible writing a single external.
>
> I'm sure it's a good choice in most cases, but i prefer using libraries
> - when they share a lot of code
> - because the flext overhead is much lighter then (ok, this shall stop with
> shared flext libraries)
> - when there's a common info pool that is shared among the library externals

All of this is not the case with the two external library Tim wants to
write. Point two can probably be solved by making flext dynamic.

I prefer single external because:
- You do not have to load the whole library if you want
to use an external
- you do not have 20 -lib switches in your commandline
- you can distribute patches by just adding the externals they
use in the same folder
- most libraries do not share any common info
- it will be easier to integrate them with the other externals
- you can classify them by putting them into folders

So I think that the tendency should be to write single externals,
try to collaborate with others (look at whats there, improve
what already exists instead of writing new variations).

Greetings,

Guenter