Plugins: Libgretl Reference Manual

Plugins

Plugins — accessing gretl plugins

Functions

void *	gretl_dlopen ()
void *	gretl_dlsym ()
void *	get_plugin_function ()
void	close_plugin ()
void	plugins_cleanup ()

Includes

#include <libgretl.h>

Description

Some of the functionality of libgretl is provided by plugin modules that are loaded on demand. Here we have functions for opening and closing plugins, and for obtaining a pointer to a symbol from a gretl plugin. These functions should work on both unix-type systems (including Mac OS X) and MS Windows.

Note that if you wish to make use of gretl plugins in your own program, you will have to build and install the plugins (of course) and you may also have to tell libgretl where to find them. This can be done via the libgretl function set_gretl_plugin_path(). For example, if the plugins are in /opt/gretl/lib/gretl-gtk2 then in a C program you could do:

set_gretl_plugin_path("/opt/gretl/lib/gretl-gtk2");

Functions

gretl_dlopen ()

void *
gretl_dlopen (const char *path,
              int now);

Cross-platform wrapper for opening a shared code object on MS Windows or unix-type systems (including OS X).

Parameters

path	full path to the shared object to be opened.
now	on *nix, if non-zero we call dlopen with the flag RTLD_NOW, else we use RTLD_LAZY.

Returns

handle to the shared object.

gretl_dlsym ()

void *
gretl_dlsym (void *handle,
             const char *name);

Cross-platform wrapper for obtaining a pointer to a named symbol in a shared object represented by handle .

Parameters

handle	handle to shared object; see `gretl_dlopen()`.
name	name of symbol to look up.

Returns

pointer corresponding to name , or NULL.

get_plugin_function ()

void *
get_plugin_function (const char *funcname);

Looks up funcname in gretl's internal plugin table and attempts to open the plugin object file that offers the given function.

Parameters

funcname

name of function to access.

Returns

function pointer, or NULL on failure.

close_plugin ()

void
close_plugin (void *handle);

Closes a shared plugin object.

Parameters

handle

pointer obtained via the handle argument to get_plugin_function().

plugins_cleanup ()

void
plugins_cleanup (void);