I think Fricy is referring to Mifki's modifications to other plugins (e.g. mousequery) to make them work better with TwbT.
Either way, there's no good reason (other than, as I conceded earlier, the effort required to make the change now), for plugins to have to be compiled against a specific version of DFHack as a whole. Without that requirement, the same exact twbt.plugin.dll could load against .40.11r1 or .40.12r0 without any work by anyone, which in turn means that people compiling starter packs and whatnot won't have to wait for as many updates with each release of anything.
Current process:
* DF updates.
* Symbol updates.
* DF hack updates.
* 3rd party plugins updates.
* Starter pack release.
New process could (should) be:
* DF updates.
* Symbol updates.
* IF new/changed symbols, DF hack updates to structs/API.
* IF DF hack updates to structs/API, 3rd party plugins updates.
* Starter pack release.
In this case, unless I just don't understand something about the symbols update process, I'm effectively running the exact same code as DFHack 0.40.11r1 with symbols from DF 0.40.12. I'm completely at a loss as to why, if only symbols.xml updates were really what was needed in the first place, I had to jump through so many hoops to get to TwbT on DF 0.40.12 in the first place - I should be able to just update the DFHack 0.40.11r1 with the new symbols file and
go, not recompile every plugin just so it can convince DFHack that everything is 0.40.12r0.
e2: I got the Hotkeys plugin working with this release too (literally did nothing except figure out where the source was and how to add a plugin to the cmake jaunts):
e3: I also got automelt working HOWEVER - there's got to be a better way to find spots to add text than what I did.
It appears that we have duplicated effort; sorry for not being more vocal about the latter progress. (At least this provides more evidence of their desirability.) For automelt, I rearranged the lines again to put it and autotrade together, and made the two merge at the bottom when there isn't enough room for the stockpile links.
No worries! I've done 0 development on plugins - just got to the point today where I know enough to be dangerous.