Mono.Addins Release Notes

Mono.Addins 0.3

The 0.3 release comes with many bug fixes and some improvements:

Added support for Localization of Add-ins.
Add-in roots can now have dependencies on other add-in roots, and extend extension points defined by those.
Added support for non-shared add-in folders. Add-ins located in such folders won't be visible from other non-shared folders. Folders containing add-in hosts are non-shared by default, which means that different installations of the same application won't interfere each other anymore.
The add-in scanner is now more robust and it is better in reporting scanning errors.
Fixed some issues in the add-in loader, which did not detect add-in changes the first time the host application was started.
New AddinTreeWidget widget in the Mono.Addins.Gui, which can be used by applications to show a tree of add-ins.
Some minor improvements in the API.

The 0.2 release comes with many bug fixes and some improvements and new features:

Assemblies registered in the GAC can now be referenced from .addins files.
Add-ins now have a private data path which can be used by extensions to store arbitrary data files at run time.
Added support for add-ins which are disabled by default.
The core library no longer depends on Mono.Posix.
The assemblies are now signed.
Several improvements in the classes of the Mono.Addins.Description namespace.
Added support for getting resource strings and resource objects from extension nodes.

Mono.Addins 0.1 is the first official release of the library.

The main features in this release are:

Supports descriptions of add-ins using custom attributes (for simple and common extensions) or using an xml manifest (for more complex extensibility needs).
Support for add-in hierarchies, where add-ins may depend on other add-ins.
Lazy loading of add-ins.
Provides an API for accessing to add-in descriptions, which will allow building development and documentation tools for handling add-ins.
Dynamic activation / deactivation of add-ins at run time.
Allows sharing add-in registries between applications, and defining arbitrary add-in locations.
Allows implementing extensible libraries.
In addition to the basic add-in engine, it provides a Setup library to be used by applications which want to offer basic add-in management features to users, such as enabling/disabling add-ins, or installing add-ins from on-line repositories.