On 2012-06-18 16:56, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
Hi group,
I've been reading up on D for the past few days--something I'd been
planning to do for quite a while--and find much to like and little to
dislike; as such, I am considering using it for my next project, which
would run on Linux (and possibly some other POSIX systems) and would
need to load plugins.
Now I've done such things in C in the past, and it's not too difficult:
you create a .so file, have it call some initial function right after
the dlopen(), and then have that initial function register the new
functionality available.
After looking at the documentation for a few days, I've come to the
conclusion that with Object.factory and interfaces, I believe I can
abstract things enough so that all a plugin would need to do is register
a new class, which could then be instantiated if needs be.
Yes, in theory.
However, what
I don't find is the answer to the two following questions:
- Does D support dlopen(), or some similar mechanism, to allow me to
load plugins at runtime?
Yes. You can compile D code to a standard dynamic library, just as you
would using C.
- If it does, does Object.factory() still work for new classes loaded in
through dlopen() (or its functional equivalence)?
No.
Dynamic libraries are currently not working properly in D. The runtime
needs to be updated to handle it. There are some problem with module
info, exception handling tables and TLS. There might be some problem
left with PIC as well.
This is worked on and hopefully we will have a solution not too far in
the future.
--
/Jacob Carlborg
