In my never-ending battle to allow for plugins to modify other plugin,
I have a proposal to make that much easier.
Instead of requiring plugins to register functions to hooks, lets
define a set of subroutines that are the hook. If the subroutine
exists, call it.
(Here's the list of hooks..)
config queue data data_post quit rcpt mail ehlo helo
auth auth-plain auth-login auth-cram-md5
connect reset_transaction unrecognized_command disconnect
deny
We could call the subroutines hook_${_} (i.e. hook_mail) or something.
Since all the plugins are objects, we could then use UNIVERSAL::can or
other symbol table fun. It's an increased startup cost as we have to
iterate over all the possible hooks to see if the plugin "can" do it.
As we seem to be heading towards more persistent systems, and less
tcpserver stuff, the overhead disappears.
This makes it much easier to subclass plugins. Which makes it much
easier to extend plugins and have local customizations.
In terms of backwards compatibility - we can maintain it by having the
(current) register subroutine create the appropriate subroutine or
alias.
We lose the ability to have a plugin register multiple subroutines for
a single hook. It'll have to do:
sub hook_name {
sub1(@_);
sub2(@_);
}
but that's not really too bad.
thoughts?
-R
