Even more dynamic spec procs?

From: Patrick Dughi (dughi@imaxx.net)
Date: 09/07/02


        I remember a while back when someone submitted a patch to allow
dynamic setting of spec procs via OLC controls, which was fairly useful,
in fact.  Perhaps it'd be a nice time to add an update to that, and use
dll's/shared object files to allow for a pluggable module system?

        Actually, spec procs were the first thing I thought of, but then I
realized that other things; skills, spells, etc, all could be distributed
in binary modules in the same fashion as world files.  It started to seem
like a fairly exciting project, especially to push in a new
command/skill/spell and give it a wide distribution; all you'd have to do
is pop a file in a directory, and perhaps run an update command from the
mud (or send a signal, or have it simply check for new/deleted entries on
a timed pulse).

        That's all fair and well, probably not even that hard to do;
dlopen, dlsym or LoadLibrary/GetProcAddress are really pretty
straightforward.  Then you'd just need a standard name and access scheme
and you'd be set.

        What'd I'm curious about though, is there any sort of saftey net
associated with so's/DLL's?  The only reason I'd be scared to add things
in this modular form would be that someone else wrote them, so if they
fail, I want to have my mud keep going.

        Really though, that's a minor concern.  As long as the source code
accompanied it, which it might have to, inorder to be relinked against the
header files if you made interesting changes, you'd be - eventually -
fine.

        Anyway, just mostly opening up the topic to discussion.  Until I
finish, oh, a mountain of projects for work, which haven't decreased in
number or need for the last, oh, 18 months or so, I don't have the time to
actually _do_ it, but I do have the time to talk about it.

                                PjD

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