State of Extension Manager
First of all, Mads asked me to join BlogEngine team and contribute by implementing Extension Manager as a part of BE core functionality, and I’ve agreed. If you downloaded latest bits you’ve probably noticed that it already has Extension Manager in it, although you might run into issues using it. It is very early in development and there been lots of small changes and playing around at this stage. One issue Mads pointed at was the fact that, when edit source code, IIS also reloads worker process, not only the application. So, if you have an application pull at hosting machine, multiple applications running in that worker process will be dumped and reloaded – not exactly nice behavior. I’m trying to find a way to programmatically (or with configuration settings) ask IIS to ease up and only reload application, but seriously in doubt it will let me, because it actually what happens when you manually change file in App_Code directory, meaning it is pretty fundamental thing. If you know a way of doing this trick, please let me know.
I’ve got many emails about default settings page that Manager will provide to extensions, so I feel a need to re-iterate on this one. There will be changes to this page (for instance, overridable by extension authors help (right-top in the picture) on settings usage, list of delimiters to choose for value separation etc.). And there is going to be a way to create your own custom settings page(s) that manager will use instead of default page, although this one probably not in 1.3 release. Also new, easier syntax will be available to save and retrieve setting to and from Extension Manager. It’s all in workings right now and I’m planning to submit changes to source control from where you can grab it by the end of this week. Version that currently in repository is an intermediate one; it has been built as add-on and will be re-designed to become a part of core engine. After I submit this first integrated version of Extension Manager, I’ll do a post on all changes and new features and will ask for your feedback, so we can make it better together.
