Pygmalions.Nebula.Extending 0.2.1

Nebula Extending

Fundamental library of Pygmalions' Nebula Framework.

This library provides the assemblies filter mechanism which are mostly used for in-assembly auto discovery functions.

Checking all types in all loaded assemblies is very time-consuming. Especially there are many assemblies provided by the language or the third parties which don't have any possibility to contain types which should be auto discovered.

By using this library, the auto discovery functions can ignore most assemblies which are not used as plugins, which means that they don't have types to discover.

Concepts

Extension Assembly

A plugin, or a plugin assembly, is the plugin which contains types that should enable in-assembly auto discovery on them.

All classes which implement the IPlugin interface declared in the ExtensionAttribute will be automatically instantiated and installed.

How to Use

Make An Assembly Discoverable

All libraries in Nebula.Framework use this library to filter assemblies. To auto discovery will always enable on the entrance assembly (which contains the program entrance). Otherwise, mark the assembly with the PluginAssembly attribute in any .cs file outsides the namespace.

[assembly: Extension]

Search in Scanned Extension Assemblies

foreach (var assembly in Plugins.Assemblies)
{
    // Do something here.
}

Remarks

This library is under rapid development, thus its API may be very unstable, DO NOT use it in the production environment, until its version reaches 1.0.0.