Hi all,
We have been working on refactoring the ROS plugin system "pluginlib" (
http://www.ros.org/wiki/pluginlib) in order to separate out ROS-agnostic
components along with a few other improvements. The result was breaking the
pluginlib package into two smaller packages..."plugins" and "pluginlib".
"plugins" implements the core plugin loading system and is independent of
the ROS build system. "pluginlib" is a layer that has the same exact API as
the existing pluginlib but will now utilize "plugins" in its
implementation. Packages depending on pluginlib will not need to change.

As plugins are an important part of ROS and software development in
general, we would like to publically review the API for the lower-level
"plugins" package. If you would like to review the API, please see the API
review page I created on the wiki at:

http://www.ros.org/wiki/plugins/Reviews/2012-08-31_API_Review

Please get your comments in by September 5, 2012 so that we can decide if
changes are needed before implementing the pluginlib compatability layer.

Cheers,
Mirza