With agreement from @attrc and @imhlv2, I'm removing the useless
validate method from the object. It defaulted to returning inaccurate
information (validity undetermined, but validate returned True as if
validation had happened) and is better handled by individual classes
implementing is_valid (which seems the preferred nomenclature) and
throwing exceptions if it's called on a class that doesn't have it.
So this allows people to alter the APIs for their plugins and allows
plugins to verify the API is compatible with the one they expect.
It adds a version property to Plugin classes, and has a SemVer checking
method which can be called from other plugins to verify a plugin against
a particular version.
Note: creation of enumerations can be done using Context.object, which
should allow reference of enumeration members by normal type objects.
If it turns out enumerations are never referenced from types, we can
easily remove the try/except in the Module.object method.
Context.object accepts a template or a string name (and now a type
flag). Module.object only accepts a string (because a template already
has most of the stuff built in and might as well be passed to the
Context.object constructor).
The gotcha here is the absolute flag, which must now be set
appropriately in all cases *except* where the module is constructed
with an offset of 0 (whereby it will have no impact).
Consider revisiting this at some point, it immediately throws an
exception, so should cause significant slow downs (none detected on a
reasonably fast machine, although buildbot will give a better idea).
Without this a lot more specific typing will be required on the
expectation that Structs will be returned rather than any other type of
object.
Mike Auty