automatic plugin loading vs. manual plugin loading

[stax76]

I wouldn't mind hearing some opinions why you prefer one over the other. For me it's automatic loading, seem to be easy but then I'm only using very basic scripts. StaxRip using automatic loading while virtually all other frondends use manual loading. I don't know what's more popular for users that write scripts by hand, manual loading seem to be popular there as well. I hope this thread will give me a better idea of the pros and cons.

In case somebody wants to reread the help:

http://www.avisynth.org/AviSynthPlugins

[Mug Funky]

i only manually load once in a blue moon where i need an old version of some plugin to make things work.

i also do most of my stuff through avsi functions... hehe ultimate laziness.

but seriously, it works out well this way so long as you keep your plugins in check and try not to break your avsi's. it's a lot easier for other people too - typing "converttopal()" is much less painful than a million loadplugin calls.

[MediumRare]

Initially I just dumped everything in the plugins folder, but lately have started manually loading the stuff, with comments for the requirement. This is especially useful when conflicting versions are required for different tools.

It's like declaring your variables when programming in languages that don't require this (e.g. Fortran or Perl): you know what you're using and why.

G

[mg262]

Automatic, except for my own... because I want to be sure that the latest version is loaded from the directory it is compiled into.

I have two wrapper functions which I switch between like this...

Load("Foreground")
LoadDebug("Foreground")

So I can use either a release version or a debug version of the plug-in. (There should be a way to detect what mode the IDE is in and switch automatically, but I haven't looked into it.)

[berrinam]

Automatic loading, definitely. Shorter scripts required, you can copy the plugins directory from one computer to another and you can be (almost) sure that the same functions work there.

[Chainmax]

Manual. It avoids possible conflicts and since most of my scripts are simple and similar I can just copy-paste the loadplugin calls.

[Scintilla]

Automatic, though it seems that I have so many plugins now (65) that I have to load quite a few of them in a separate auto-loading .AVSI file since they don't auto-load the normal way anymore.