Agreed on the impracticality, but the SavedVars limit is pretty large. It will hold, for example, the text of every item pre-ICC (yes, I test my limits
).
However, there is no "you can't put more here" error. If an addon's SavedVars file gets too large, it will be deleted the next time the addon loads.
The load times wouldn't be a whole lot worse than a normal addon. Either way, you're still loading and executing. Stored in SavedVars, you're loading a string, then executing the string, which lua handles fairly efficiently
if you do it all as one string (not line by line and concatenating it together). As long as you store each lua file as its own string it shouldn't be too bad.
I still think the current model is better for most uses; while I would love the ability to send someone an addon, the reality is that they'd almost always need to go get Trojo first anyway. May as well just have them get the addon. Also, you'd have all the settings for all the Trojo addons stored together, so if one of them corrupted itself, all of them would be at risk.
Finally, security would be a nightmare. I prefer having the code somewhere I (or WOWI
) can read it first.
That said, if you can come up with a macro that will allow receiving of an addon for quick-and-dirty testing/whatever, you may have a use-case. I wouldn't make them persistent though. Instead, make Trojo send a URL with each addon and save the URLs so they can see where to get the full version.