Changes between Version 1 and Version 2 of libroar/plugins


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Timestamp:
03/20/12 14:03:32 (12 years ago)
Author:
ph3-der-loewe
Comment:

some introduction

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  • libroar/plugins

    v1 v2  
     1= Introduction = 
     2libroar contains a plugin loader API. It can be used by any application to load plugins. It is not specific to audio or any of the RoarAudio software packages. It is designed universally and handles tasks common to all plugin interfaces such as loading of needed files, handling meta data (such as plugin name, author and description) as well as passing data between the plugin and the host application. 
     3 
     4The plugin loader is build on top of the dynamic loader abstraction and can be used at different levels of abstraction. 
     5 
     6= Main layers = 
     7The plugin API consists of 3 main layers: the Dynamic Loader, the Llugin Loader and the Plugin Container. 
     8 
     9== The Dynamic Loader == 
     10The Dynamic Loader is a abstraction of the system's dynamic loader. It is abled to load all shared libraries and shared library formats as used by the system. It is designed similar to the POSIX dlopen() and friends. 
     11 
     12== The Plugin Loader == 
     13The Plugin Loader is build directly into the Dynamic Loader and can be activated by a single boolean setting (ra_init). If enabled it will try to find a plugin entry symbol and start loading the plugin. This includes setting up an new context for the plugin with global data and error states as well as registering all the services the plugin provides. This also checks if the plugin is actually be written for the host application so it can not crash later because of mismatching ABIs. 
     14 
     15== The Plugin Container == 
     16The Plugin Container is a separate module. It can store multiple plugins at the same time and makes it easy for an application to handle them. A application using the container does not need to keep a list of plugins or send events to them individually but just pass the stuff to the container. 
     17 
    118= List of Subtopics = 
    219