An extensible API for plugin management

I've pushed the first bits of code to a GitHub branch. It currently supports installing through Git checkout and Git submodule.

This sounds like a great idea. Just yesterday I was getting annoyed about how hard plugin dependencies are to manage compared to gems. Dependency hell....

Please provide some mechanism to specify versions or branches of plugins - either a Git revision number, or a branch.

The hook approach for #update and #remove sounds great as well. Ideally, this facility would be completely decoupled from the rest of Rails (especially the config/initialization/environment), so it could be done as part of app startup from config/preinitializer.rb. That way, your piston/braid/giternal config could be leveraged to automatically bring the plugin up to the version you want.

Chad: That's what we thought about, all SCM plugins should be loaded automatically and system-wide without having to tweak the config files.

Chad: and yes, revision, branch and all these things will be handle by the manager.

NOTE : Update Rails::TemplateRunner to make use of script/plugin features. Git submodules for an example

Is this still valid?

Just a little update too: I would say this is handled fairly enough by Bundler now by using the git comment in Gemfile. If you want to use a specific version of a plugin, it's best practice if it was a gem.