[Glade-devel] g_module plugins (was: [glade3, patch] load library module before calling *_get_type ())

[Tommi Komulainen]

On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 17:28, ext bighead@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
> Hey
> 
> Tommi Komulainen <tommi.komulainen@nokia.com> writes:
> 
> > module = g_module_load (g_module_build_path (MODULES, library));
> > if (!module)
> > 	module = g_module_load (g_module_build_path (NULL, library));
> > 
> 
> Ok I'll go on a tangent here. So if I can open up any lib like that, this
> could be the basis of C based plugins?

Well, umm, that's pretty much how browser, xmms, or any other plugins
work.  You just need to define known entry points to the library,
knowing the name of a function you can get a pointer to the function
which you can then call (provided that you also know the signature.)

In gobject case, the known entry point is <foo>_get_type().  Knowing
<foo> you can make the call to get the object GType, with which you can
then create new instances, query names of all properties and signals,
and probably something else I'm forgetting.

It's quite straightforward, really.


-- 
Tommi Komulainen <tommi.komulainen@nokia.com>