Does a composable Application necessarily imply a Plugin based architecture

Question

I am currently working on an application and would like to add new functionality to it.

One would be to update the application's code directly.

Another would be to offer an extensibility layer where new features will be added to.

Having read multiple posts on Plugin architectures and using MEF for creating composable apps, i am a bit confused whether the 2 terms actually mean the same thing, and if not in what do they differ?

Also, i am interested to know of any good design solutions that assist in "opening up" my application to allow easier expansion in the future (new futures can be added "as an extension")

Answer 1

You will definitely need a plug-in based architecture to have a generic extensibility framework.

However, you do not necessarily need a Dependency Container or MEF.

It may be as simple as defining an IPlugIn interface and scanning assemblies for types implementing the interface. Then instantiating an instance of the type to get going.