Export collectd API

[matwey]

• Version of collectd: 5.x and 6.x
• Operating system / distribution: all OS

This is a feature request to export plugin API.

Currently, collectd provides the python plugin, the way to execute out-of-tree user code as a plugin. The python plugin is not just an replacement for not-yet-written plugins but it also allows the user to collect the data in custom circumstances, for instance some custom hardware or proprietary software, i.e. when writing the in-tree collectd plugin is meaningless.

Unfortunately, writing out-of-tree C plugin is currently more complicated that using Python. For instance, https://github.com/nickbabcock/collectd-rust-plugin#to-build needs to supply all existed collectd API and ask user to choose or guess the version. No need to say that some collectd API updates can be missed in such approach.

What I would expect is collectd/plugin.h installed to the user OS, allowing the user to compile his out-of-tree code and produce dynamically loaded shared object ELF to load from collectd.