[jifty-devel] plugin cleanups

[Chia-liang Kao]

Hi,

with the increasing numbers of jifty plugins being committed to the
repository, I think it's a good idea to come up with some guidelines for
maintaining plugins, and more importantly, keep the core jifty modules slim.

right now, lots of modules (33) are added directly under
lib/Jifty/Plugin and share/plugins/.  This approach makes it a lot
easier to test and deploy, but also creates problems like messy optional
dependencies.  there are a few other modules under plugins/, which are
harder to install (and takes extra effort to test against the in-tree
jifty).

I think the plugins/ approach is probably more correct, as it makes it
possible to release them separately and list plugin-specific
dependencies.  But to make it as easy as putthing all things under lib
to test and install, we need:

- in toplevel Makefile.PL, takes an argument listing all plugin
directories we want to test and install
- make the toplevel makefile.pl call the plugins' makefile.pl with
proper predefined harness_perl_switches to include the lib in jifty tree.
- optionally a shortcut arg in makefile.pl to include core modules, all
modules under plugins/.
- make the "test" and "install" targets call the same targets for plugins.

What do people think?

Cheers,
CLK