[PD-dev] External Manager - Load my Externals

[Krzysztof Czaja]

hi Guenter, thanks for answering my stupid questions!

guenter geiger wrote:
...
 > Yes, but considering that there are only useful externals there,
 > it makes sense to install them all (hard disk space is cheap, and
 > pd with externals is still small in comparison to other software)

well... there are likely a few thousand Pd externals that are more
or less useful, in a couple of years.  That could be too much for
my brain space.  I also fear the older patches will gradually stop
working, if their abstraction names are stolen by new externals
that will be introduced.

...
 >> >>Another advantage of single over libraries of externals is that name
 >> >>conflicts are easier to spot.
 >>
 >>but are not they harder to resolve that way?
 >
 >
 > no, they are not harder to resolve. They finally get resolved.

I meant getting people to agree on what is good for all of them is
usually harder than letting every self choose what it wants.

Of course, if there is a standard set of externals, there should
be a corresponding standard set of names.  So, for example, I have
been annoying everybody, many times, with the ``standard max/msp
names should be reserved'' theme.

But the non-standard externals, i.e. most of them, would have been
easier to maintain, if there was a name resolution scheme based on
the combination of per-user configuration and dependencies stored
in .pd files.

 > No, the #include thing is they way how "links" are implemented in CVS.

I have not given it much thinking yet, but I would start with what
seems like a more natural way of building a collection of
externals:  run make on every directory in the list, then consult
another list to pick the needed binaries from wherever they went
to.  Just two files to maintain for every platform: linux.dirs and
linux.binaries, etc.

 > Another topic is shared code. I think shared code could go into a dll.
 > A standard dll gets automatically loaded when the first external that uses
 > it gets loaded.

do you mean loading by a stub, or by some yet-to-implement magic
in the Pd loader?

Krzysztof