# cxx-plugin

This is a simple C++ class encapsulating "Plugins". Have fun.

## HOW TO BUILD

Generally, just compile it as a static or shared library. In many cases you can
just copy the source files into your projects build.

Look in the makefiles directory for some ideas.

```sh
make -f makefiles/Makefile.gcc
nmake /nologo /f makefiles\Makefile.msvc

ninja -f makefiles/gcc.ninja
ninja -f makefiles\msvc.ninja

cp makefiles/CMakeLists.txt ./
cmake -S . -B obj
cd obj
# whatever.
```

Should also give you an idea.

## HOW TO USE

Create a CxxPlugin object, passing the file name (minus the extension) of the
plugin file to the constructor.  The class will figure out what platform
specific extension (.dll, .so, .dylib) needs to be appended.

Once that is done, use the load_funcptr and load_functor methods to
respectively extract function pointers and function objects out of the plugin.

When the CxxPlugin is destroyed, it will attempt to unload the plugin from your
program. If that actually does anything meaningful, is not guaranteed by
CxxPlugin.

Look in the tests directory for usage examples of both a mediocre plugin and a
program to load it via CxxPlugin. Building info for compiling your own plugins
can be guesed by reading makefiles/Makefile.compilername, or your systems
documentation. I'm not a psychic.

## DOCUMENTATION

Any C++ programmer should be able to figure it out from reading the header
file, it is suitably commented to make it even more obvious.

If you have Doxygen installed, you can generate HTML documentation for use with
a web browser; the included Doxyfile places that documentation in a top level
"docs" folder when you run doxygen.

The makefiles have a target called "docs" that will run doxygen. It assumes that the doxygen program is in your command prompts path.

## NOTES

Support for using a custom file extension might be added later, either via the
constructor or a compile time preprocessor directive.

I'm sorry but loading a library as a "Framework" in MacOS X is not supported
right now. Support for a custom file extension might work.

The usages of the .cxx, .hxx, and .h extensions are intentional. Contrast this
against the more "Commonly" named stuff in tests/. CppPlugin just didn't have
that ring to it like CxxPlugin does ;).