Question

I’m trying to implement a plug-in like application. I know there are already several solution out there but this is just going to be proof of the concept, nothing more. The idea would be to make the application main application almost featureless by default and then let the plugins know about each other, having them have implement all the needed features.

A couple of issues arise:

1. I want the plugins at runtime to know about each other through my application. That wouldn’t mean that at code-time they couldn’t reference other plugin’s assemblies so they could use its interfaces, only that plugin-feature initialization should be always through my main app. For example: if I have both plugins X and Y loaded and Y wants to use X’s features, it should “register” its interest though my application to use its features. I’d have to have a kind of “dictionary” in my application where I store all the loaded plugins. After registering for interest in my application, plugin Y would get a reference to X so it could use it. Is this a good approach?
2. When coding plugin Y that uses X, I’d need to reference X’s assembly, so I can program against its interface. That has the issue of versioning. What if I code my plugin Y against an outdated version of plugin X? Should I always use a “central” place where all assemblies are, having there always the up to date versions of the assemblies?

Are there by chance any books out there that specifically deal with these kinds of designs for .NET?

Thanks

edit: I think people are drifting away from the 2 questions I made. I can take a look at both MEF and #develop, but I’d like to get specifics answers to the questions I made.

Answer 1

Look into the System.AddIn namespace. It’s a little lower-level than MEF, and so should give you the “implement it myself” experience you’re looking for.