Plugin version checking

[Aaron]

Hi All,

As of the next developmental build, L3DT will be checking the version number of the plugin API used to compile each plugin. What happens next depends on the relative version numbers:

Old plugin with new L3DT

The plugin API is backwards compatible, so there's no problem in loading an old plugin with a new version of L3DT.

At some time in the future I may, however, 'retire' the very oldest plugin API versions, as these included functions that are now deprecated and marked for removal. I've no plan to do this in the immediately foreseeable future.

New plugin with old L3DT

This one is dangerous. If the API version in the plugin is newer than the version supported by your copy of L3DT, it could cause all sorts of weird errors (or crashes, in poorly written plugins). To prevent this, L3DT will now disable plugins compiled with newer API versions, and suggest you upgrade to a newer version of L3DT.

[Note that this was the case that was causing grief for users of L3DT for Torque v2.5c who tried to use the latest build of the L3DTio_Atlas2 plugin, which used a newer plugin API version. This was since fixed by recompiling the plugin with an older API version.]

Cheerio,
Aaron.