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Subject: Re: Plugins

Re: Plugins

From: Benjamin <mailinglists_at_samuraipanda.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 07:43:42 -0800

Will the plugins have access to infomration and control outside of their
memory space? In otherwords, I need to have access to information on the
currently playing MP3 to create the bookmark for that file.

Thanks,
Ben



---------- Original Message -----------
From: Björn Stenberg <bjorn_at_haxx.se>
To: rockbox_at_cool.haxx.se
Sent: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 20:42:20 +0200
Subject: Plugins

> Hi all.
>
> I have just added plugin loading capability to CVS.
>
> Plugins consist of code and data that is loaded to a 32KB reserved
> memory area at the top of ram. After a plugin has been loaded, it is
> started with two parameters: plugin_start(struct plugin_api*
> rockbox, void* parameter)
>
> The first parameter is a pointer to a struct containing the api for
> accessing rockbox functions. The struct contains a number of
> function pointers that the plugin can use to call rockbox code.
>
> The second parameter is for data that is passed to the plugin at
> startup. Currently only the text viewer plugin uses this parameter.
>
> Only one plugin can be loaded at a time. Plugins run in the GUI
> thread and have exclusive control over the user interface. This
> means you cannot switch back and forth between a plugin and rockbox.
> A plugin is loaded, ran and then exited, which returns control to rockbox.
>
> Plugins have the file extension .rock after a word joke on irc: A
> box full of .rocks == rockbox.
>
> In the apps/plugins directory, there is a short example plugin
> called helloworld.c. It describes a few necessary things a plugin
> must contain and do: http://rockbox.haxx.se/apps/plugins/helloworld.c
>
> One thing it doesn't address is target dependency: If your plugin
> only works on a specific target, you must place #ifdef HAVE_xxx
> around the entire code (but *after* #include "plugin.h"!) so that
> the source file can still compile for all targets. This will result
> in a 0-byte .rock file which the plugin loader can safely reject.
>
> The plugin API currently does not offer access the entire rockbox
> code base. It merely defines the functions used by today's plugins.
> However the api is designed to be extended over time. It contains
> api version and hardware model checks that should make it relatively
> safe against accidentally mixing rockbox and plugin versions. If
> there are functions you would like to see added to the api, just
> send a mail here with your suggestions.
>
> As implied by this, plugins do not only work against the exact
> rockbox binary they were compiled with. They will work with any
> binary that was built with the same api version and target as the
> plugin. This means you can download and install new plugins without
> having to install an updated rockbox binary.
>
> Plugins are intended to be completely self-contained when it comes
> to data. This means that they do not use the rockbox language
> handling code, and must handle any internationalization by their own.
>
> Currently, the plugins are sort of shoe-horned into the code in a
> rather inflexible way. The game and demo menus have simply been
> modified to load respective plugin, and the text viewer is hardcoded
> to load when a text file is to be viewed. In the near future, I
> would like to replace this with a more flexible system. Brian King's
> .rockbox browsing patch will most likely be used for this purpose.
> Perhaps we should also split the /.rockbox/rocks directory into
> subdirs for different categories, although I think defining
> categories is always a difficult thing.
>
> Also, we need some way of registering viewer plugins. Currently we
> only have a text viewer, but i foresee hex viewers, plugin editor,
> id3 editors, mp3 cutting tools and a wealth of other useful things,
> easily accessible from the ON+PLAY menu. Currently I'm leaning
> towards using a simple text config file to specify which plugins are
> file viewers. (Perhaps with a specific plugin for managing the
> config file...)
>
> To make plugin development and debugging easier, plugins work on the
> x11 uisimulators too. They are implemented as dynamically loaded
> shared libraries.
>
> There's probably a bunch of things I've forgotten to mention here,
> but I'm sure you will ask me about those. :-)
>
> --
> Björn
------- End of Original Message -------
Received on 2003-06-30

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