[gmpi] Re: Topic 4: Host Interface

On Mon, 24 Mar 2003, Silver Blade wrote:

> > 1.  Are plugins run in-process or out-of-process?

> > In-process, but they are allowed to be a proxy for an out-of-process or
> > network implementation.

> In an ideal world, I'd like to see out-of-process plugins. But we don't live
> in an ideal world, so I'd say all plugins should be in-process.

In-process. However, a well-designed GMPI spec should make it fairly easy
to move to out-of-process plug-ins without throwing the rest of the spec
away at such a time that OSes are able to support such plug-ins
efficiently.

> For networking, GMPI should provide means of communication over the network.
> While this, in a sense, out-of-process, the only out-of-process thing about
> it is that we're using the platform's networking functions, and the plugin
> is on a different computer.

no, GMPI should not provide this in itself.. however we should try and
leave things open so as not to break plug-ins that want to work in this
way.

> While I know technologies such as ReWire already allow communication between
> separate processes, there must be a way of creating a library which can be
> loaded by the system and used by many processes - like a daemon/server.
> I'm not too hot on the technicalities of this though, so I might be
> completely wrong and this might just be impossible. But it's an idea, and if
> it works, the results should be good.

Indeed, this is possible, however at the moment inprocess is the only way
to go for efficiency reasons.

> Plugins that have their own plugins could also be a possibility, although
> I'm not sure where this could be useful (perhaps an effect unit which hosts
> other effects and provides a common front-end for them?)

Yep, or a synth plugin that provides effects on its outputs..

Regards,
        Angus.


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