Topic: AddIns format

I'm looking for different manners of adding AddIns to FSB Pro.
There are two variants for now:
- in form of a source code file as the custom indicators,
- compiled dll

My personal opinion is that code files work well. It's easy to be edited directly and do not require special framework to be included in the project.
On the other side Microsoft's addins format http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb384200.aspx provides some flexibility but I found it rather complicated. Also add-ins in form of dlls cannot be easily edited.

What do you think?

Re: AddIns format

Source code!

3

Re: AddIns format

I think supporting both would be a worthwhile idea, although that the Microsoft AddIn model seems a little complex.

The source code (as is the case now for custom indicators) works very well for most items, but it would also be nice to use a DLL in certain cases (eg. an indicator that uses external commercial libraries where the binary can be distributed, but a release of the source code would be in breach of license).

Re: AddIns format

Adam, what do you suggest to use, Microsoft AddIn model, MEF or some custom dll discovery model?
FSB Pro uses Unity container.

Edit:

Probably we can use MEF Contrib for bridge between MEF and Unity.

5 (edited by ab 2013-02-13 04:01:08)

Re: AddIns format

I have mainly used the code available at http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile … cture.aspx as a base anytime I needed to do this type of work, although I appreciate that there are a lot newer (and probably better) ways to do this with .NET 4.0 & 4.5.

Mainly I've stuck with the custom DLL loading and binding so there is no need to have the referenced assemblies in the GAC, which is always an issue when copying DLL files around directly.  This is also the reason that I have stayed away from MAF since it can be a little picky about loading 'random' assemblies.