Add the ability to specify a separate plugins.ini at runtime

This bug report appears to contradict this one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/quantum/+bug/803086, which instead proposes to remove plugins.ini to avoid having multiple configuration files.

As we have a patch unde review for the above mentioned bug it is the case of deciding for a course of action.

I'm struggling a bit to understand what we are trying to fix/improve with this bug.

Do we want to allow the Quantum administrator to change the plugin at runtime? In this case, assuming we have a concrete use case for it, the problem would be much bigger than just having multiple plugins.ini files.

If instead we want Quantum to manage several plugins at the same time, one way of addressing it is to have multiple plugins declared in quantum.conf. I'm not very keen on multiplying the number of configuration files. Still, the problem is maybe bigger, as we will need to have appropriate routing on the plugin interface. Also, we need to understand the consequences of running several plugins (which I guess will not talk each other) on the same infrastructure.

Just my 2p on the subject.

If your bug fix for 803086 goes in then this is a non-issue because we can specify a different quantum.conf file at runtime. The use case is just so that you could have two conf files pointing to different plugins and switch between them easily. One for testing, one for production, or whatever.

I haven't thought much about the several plugins at the same time issue..

Yeah, once we switch to having the plugin specifies in the quantum.conf, Brad's goal of being able to easily start + restart quantum with different plugins should be achieved.

I now understand the use case. Thanks for the clarification!

this is really just a duplicate of https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/803086