MS RFC 8: Pluggable External Feature Layer Providers

[Daniel Morissette]

Sean Gillies wrote:
> 
> I want to be able to use absolute paths instead of a combination of  
> relative path and environment variable or config property, and I  think 
> others will also want this option.
> 

Can you please explain why that's needed? Is this simply because you 
don't want to be forced to place all your plugins in the same directory 
or are there other reasons?

If we allowed the PLUGIN arg to contain path components relative to the 
MS_PLUGIN_DIR var *if it is set*, just like the DATA statement works 
relative to the SHAPEPATH, but not the .so/.dll extension then would 
that do the trick for you?

e.g.

MAP
   ...
   CONFIG "MS_PLUGIN_DIR" "/opt/mapserver/plugins"
   ...

   LAYER
     CONNECTIONTYPE CUSTOM
     PLUGIN "/path/to/anotherdir/myplugin"
     ...
    END

   LAYER
     CONNECTIONTYPE CUSTOM
     PLUGIN "myplugin"
     ...
    END
END



> Jani,
> 
> 
> What would you think about a change from CONNECTIONTYPE CUSTOM ->  
> CONNECTIONTYPE PLUGIN? I think that the meaning of "PLUGIN" will be  
> more clear to users.
> 

I like this idea.

Daniel
-- 
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  Daniel Morissette               dmorissette at dmsolutions.ca
  DM Solutions Group              http://www.dmsolutions.ca/
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