C#

Luc Pattyn wrote:

Someone has to take the initiative for a collection to be populated

Luc Pattyn wrote:

reflection code in the static initializer of Translator

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

I certainly haven't found a way to tell the runtime to initialize the class immediately upon load

Luc Pattyn wrote:

a regular plug-in scheme

static private void initialize()
{
    foreach (var assembly in AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies())
    {
        foreach (var type in assembly.GetTypes())
        {
            if (type.IsSubclassOf(typeof(Translator)))
            {
                type.InvokeMember("Initialize", BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, null, null);
            }
        }
    }
}

thugthug wrote:

the assembly still has to be loaded at some point

// Apply this attribute to the assembly so
// that it will be created when the assembly
// is loaded into memory.
[assembly: Bootstrapper()]

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Assembly)]
class BootstrapperAttribute : Attribute
{
    public BootstrapperAttribute()
    {
        Translators.FrenchTranslator.Initialize();
    }
}

static private void initialize()
{
    foreach (var assembly in AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies())
    {
        // This will cause each assembly to load its attributes.
        // A custom attribute has been added to translator dlls
        // that will cause them to intialize the static members
        // of the class.
        assembly.GetCustomAttributes(true);
    }
}

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

Aren't your static instances merely duplicates of what's in the Dictionary?

PIEBALDconsult wrote:

And is there any code in the Initialize methods?