Subject: Proof of concept mainstream plugin manager
From: Sebastian Gniazdowski <[email-masked]>
To: Zsh hackers list <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 20:44:07 +0100
List-Id: Zsh Workers List <zsh-workers.zsh.org>

Hello
There are many plugin managers but the technology is not very
astonishing. The managers add any plugin to $fpath and that's pretty
it. FPATH gets flooded, possibly naive code gets injected into
session. That's why the technology isn't very popular on this mailing
list and on IRC.

I've utilized Bart's idea to prevent fpath from flooding:

  function some_function_from_plugin {
        local FPATH=/path/to/the/plugin
        autoload -X
    }

and written a plugin manager that utilizes this. Furthermore, any
autoload, bindkey, setopt is catched and a report of plugin operation
can be obtained:

https://asciinema.org/a/f4g9dgqcq2w7998761qyigqa2

I've written the proof of concept software in 1 hour. I wonder, could
this be a path that Zsh mainstream could take to provide robust
technology for plugins, whose users demand? I imagine much more can be
done if mainstream pairs of eyes will look at this. Any ideas of what
can be done?

https://github.com/psprint/zsh-plugin-governor

Best regards,
Sebastian Gniazdowski