End-user plugin architecture 🏗️ 🔌

[brys0]

I'd really love to try and implement a 'plugin' architecture in Shadfin for end-users (i.e you guys) having the ability to create your own vue components, several caveats come with each implementation however.

1. Plugin Who | Plugin What?

Before we begin let me first describe what I mean when I am saying "plugin"

I will be referring to these as "plugins" but in reality they are end-user plugins. These should abstract alot of the complexity away from the end-user, providing an "options" api, similar to vue in which a user can create their plugin, and let them change the functionality of the app.

2. Possible Approaches

2.1 Plugins at Compile Time

This would be the closest implementation to existing plugins for vue, the difference being these plugins would either replace or extend the functionality of an existing component, but would do so at compile time, meaning the app would have to rebuilt on the end-users machine in order to add/remove plugins.

Advantages:

• Little difference in runtime performance
• Little difference in application performance

Disadvantages:

• Large difference in how the end-user would host the application, they would have to manually rebuild the app. This is not without challenge, and goes against the paradigms of a docker image or instance.
• ...

2.2 Plugins at Run Time

TBD

2.3 Plugins Injection

TBD

I need your help for ideas in this! As far as I know, this will be the first ever vue app to try and implement an end-user plugin architecture. With this, comes many many challenges and it won't be easy. Developing the app takes priority, but I'd really love to create the first end-user plugin architecture too.