Building and using a plugin?

[christinetom]

Hi everyone..

I have to ask this question even though it will look a little silly to some of you.
If I have a plugin for some open source software then how to do Install it.

I'm using FLTK and have found a pluging for it. Just the sourcecode and makefile etc.

Do I dump it's contents into the fltk directory and run the configure and then makefile.

I'm using Windows XP.

Is this how you typically install and build a plugin or is there another method used?

Thanks so very much.

[rubberman]

Most of these plugins are shared libraries (dll's in Windows lingo) that the application can dynamically load. They need to go into a directory that the application knows about and can find them. IE, just building them may not be enough. You probably need to copy/move the dll (or .so if running Unix/Linux) to a known directory for shared libraries, or configure the application to look for it elsewhere.

[christinetom]

Thanks rubberman...:) What if its a static library. Would I just include it when it is built into my project. I suppose as long as my library file directs the compiler to the correct object files then I would assume it would owrk. I'll place plugins in the home directory anyway. I'm using Wondows xp.

[rubberman]

You cannot use static libraries as a "plug-in", though as you surmise you can link it directly to the application code. However, that means it becomes not a plug-in, but a native component of the application. That also may mean that other plug-ins that implement the same functions (signatures) as your bit will not "plug in" because of symbol collision. An example of this is ODBC (database API's). Your user may want to use an Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, or other version of ODBC. If you linked your ODBC library statically, then they would not be able to use those others... Not a good thing probably.

[christinetom]

Thanks, that pretty much answers it.