Research On Plug-in Architecture

With the development of computer technology, great changes have happened to software architecture and developing ways. Developers have been seeking better architecture and ways to improve developing efficiency and software quality. Currently, a kind of architecture, which bases on plug-ins, is getting more and more adopted and many successive software products have been developed according to it. Software basing on plug-ins separates its functions into different plug-ins, so it is convenient to design and develop. Plug-ins can independently be programmed and plugged into applications dynamically. The software can add, delete and replace plug-ins easily, and developers can benefit a lot from this character. It not only makes developing different parts of software synchronously possible but also improves developing efficiency. Besides, it also makes the process of designing and developing easier so as to reduce the costs of time. Meanwhile, it makes the program easy to execute, test and maintain. For all reasons above, researches on plug-in-oriented architecture is meaningful. In this article, firstly, the structure and theory of plug-in-oriented architecture are studied, and detailed analyses focusing on designing thoughts, developing principles and feasibility are provided. Then studies on the details of SharpDevelop are undertaken. SharpDevelop is an open-sourced IDE programmed using Microsoft.NET. The architecture, which is called add-in tree, is successfully applied in SharpDevelop. Nowadays, SharpDevelop is widely used and studied by more and more people. At last, through making use of the former studies on SharpDevelop, a plug-in of SharpDevelop is developed. Architecture basing on plug-in has been applied successfully, and studying on it so as to make it adopted widely will absolutely improve developing efficiency and quality.