Re: [platform-core-dev] Conditional Plugin Loading

[Philip Borlin <pborlin@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

This looks pretty compelling.  This would really simplify things so I 
wouldn't have to worry about loading/unloading plugins.  I could simply 
download a users inclusion/exclusion filters (preset up by an admin 
tool) at login time and then the UI would apply the filters so it only 
showed relevant information.  I like it.

Thanks,
-Phil


Nick Edgar wrote:
> You may also be interested in taking a look at the support for filtering 
> by activity or role in the UI.
> A summary of this support (a little bit out of date, but still describes 
> the overall approach accurately) is available from the UI team's proposals 
> page:
> http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E/platform-ui-home/docs.html
>
> Click on Roles Support.
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
> Philip Borlin <pborlin@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
> Sent by: platform-core-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
> 12/01/2003 03:38 PM
> Please respond to
> platform-core-dev
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> To
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> Subject
> Re: [platform-core-dev] Conditional Plugin Loading
>
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>
>
> OK the full story:
>
> We are writing a custom app on top of the Eclipse Platform for a 
> controlled group of users (contracted content providers).  We provided 
> our own IPlatformRunnable and are using our own custom UI extension 
> points so we can have more control over the workflow and user 
> experience.  We don't have to worry about anyone installing plugins 
> since we didn't implement a UI to the update manager.
>
> The use case:
>
> Basically there are many different types of content that these authors 
> can create and we currently have separate tools for each type of 
> content.  We want to integrate all of the current tools into one tool 
> and want to give the whole stack to each author.  In order to submit 
> content the author needs to be on contract (for IP/legal issues and also 
> to get their royalty checks) so we don't want authors using parts of the 
> tool which will generate content they aren't contracted for.
>
> This gets back to logging in.  When they log in I only want to load the 
> plugins that handle the content they are contracted for.  More 
> specifically some plugins need to load on launch such as the plugin with 
> the IPlatformRunnable and any ui/security code needed to display the 
> login prompt.  After login other plugins may or may not need to be 
> loaded based on the type of contract the user is on.
>
> I guess I was thinking originally that I would tell Eclipse (OSGi or 
> whatever) to never load certain plugins and then the built in plugin 
> loader would load everything else.  Should I take over plugin loading to 
> make sure plugins I don't want to be loaded don't get loaded instead? 
> Or some other alternative?
>
> Hope this explains the problem well enough and thanks for your time,
> -Phil
>
>
>
> Jeff McAffer wrote:
>
> > The new runtime exposes the capability to dynamically install plugins. 
> > The rest of eclipse has not yet been updated to discover/use these 
> > newly installed plugins however.  The ability to block installation was 
> > not really on the plan.  I think the sort of scenario you describe was 
> > more in the order of user-based configuration discovery.
> >
> > Having said that, the new runtime does have a security model which, if 
> > you turn it on, allows for the blocking of admin calls such as install. 
> > The other approach that is supported is the ability to run without an 
> > agent that knows how to install bundles.  That is, you can configure and 
>
>
> > eclipse install with no update/install.  Given that you know/trust the 
> > set of plugins you start with, you can successfully prevent the 
> > installation of any plugins which would call the install API.  A sort of 
>
>
> > weak bootstrapping security.
> >
> > I would be interested in more on your usecases.
> >
> > Jeff
> >
> >
> >
> > *Philip Borlin <pborlin@xxxxxxxxxxx>*
> > Sent by: platform-core-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > 12/01/2003 12:25 PM
> > Please respond to
> > platform-core-dev
> >
> >
> >
> > To
> >               platform-core-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> > cc
> >
> > Subject
> >               [platform-core-dev] Conditional Plugin Loading
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > When the buzz around the rich client platform first started to appear I
> > remember a the talk of the possibility of conditionally loading plugins.
> > For example:
> >
> > A user logins in and is presented with only the plugins her credentials
> > authorize her to access.
> >
> > I am not worried about the authorization service so much as the ability
> > to block plugins from loading.  Is this coming?  If so does someone need
> > help?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > -Phil
> >
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