[Libreoffice] minutes of tech. steering call ...

[Kevin Hunter]

At 4:52pm -0400 Thu, 20 Oct 2011, Michael Meeks wrote:
> 	  http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/LibreOffice4

> 		+ getting stuck into Windows / mingw build etc.

 From the wiki page, one of the concerns is "binary incompatibility".  I 
assume this is in reference to extensions?

Question: is there merit to moving toward an enforced sub-process model 
for extensions?  My first thought is that this would do a couple of things:

1. This would protect LO from any extensions' instability.  If an
    extension attempts an illegal operation, only it would be shut
    down, not whole of LO.

2. By only shutting down a buggy extension, we reduce potentially
    misleading bug reports from users who wouldn't otherwise know
    the difference.

3. It would allow extensions to still be built with MSVC, regardless of
    what compiler the LO core project uses.

4. Going forward, this would force a well-defined protocol interaction
    between LO and any extensions.  This has implications for unit tests
    and security, among other things.

5. That API definition will be a *lot* of work, but hopefully somewhat
    thought out already through only a mild reengineering of the current
    binary API.

6. Interprocess communication for certain tasks will be potentially
    slower.

7. ... ?

The upside is that if we're talking a major version change, /now/ would 
be the time to do this.

Thoughts?

Kevin