Gaudi::PluginService

Introduction

The Gaudi Plugin Service is a small tool to add to a C++ application the possibility of dynamically instantiate (via factories) objects from classes defined in plug-in (or component) libraries.

While being part of Gaudi, it only depends on a Posix system (support for other systems is possible, but very low priority).

Usage

To be able to use plug-ins from an application you need:

• a base class (abstract or not) from a library
• a library that provides a class that inherits from the base class

In the base class you should declare the signature of the the factory for your derived classes. For example, if your base class is called Foo and you want to instantiate the derived classes with one std::string argument, you can write something like:

#include <Gaudi/PluginService.h>
#include <string>
class Foo {
public:
  using Factory = Gaudi::PluginService::Factory<Foo*( const std::string& )>;
 
  Foo( const std::string& name );
 
  // ...
};

The templated class Gaudi::PluginService::Factory takes as template argument the ideal signature of the factory. The in the above example, the actual signature of the factory is std::unique_ptr<Foo>(const std::string&), but we declare is as returning Foo* for brevity.

The plug-in class Bar defined in the dynamically loaded library will require a declaration to the Plugin Service to use it, so in the source file you have to have something like:

#include "Bar.h"
DECLARE_COMPONENT( Bar )

The library with Foo and the library with Bar will have to be linked against the library libGaudiPluginService.so.

To enable the automatic discovery of plugins, the library with Bar must be processed by the program listcomponents and the output must be stored in a file with extension .components in a directory in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH. For example, if the lib directory contains libBar.so and it is specified in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH, you can call the commands:

listcomponents lib/libBar.so >> lib/MyApp.components

Note that the .components file does not need to be in the same directory as libBar.so.

The application code, linked against the library providing Foo can now instantiate objects of class Bar like this:

#include "Foo.h"
 
// ...
std::unique_ptr<Foo> myBar = Foo::Factory::create( "Bar", "myBar" );
// ...

where the first argument to the function create is the name of the class you want to instantiate, and the other arguments are passed to the constructor of the class.

Special cases

Factory aliases

Together with the simple usage described above, the Gaudi Plugin Service allows you to use aliases to refer to the plug-in class. For example, for a templated plug-in class you may have:

#include "TemplatedBar.h"
typedef TemplatedBar<int, std::vector<double>> MyBar;
DECLARE_COMPONENT( MyBar )

but to instantiate it you must call

auto b = Foo::Factory::create( "TemplatedBar<int, std::vector<double> >",
                               "MyTemplatedBar" );

Which is error prone and unreadable, but you can declare the component class with and id (an alias):

DECLARE_COMPONENT_WITH_ID( MyBar, "MyBar" )

(note that the id must support the << operator of std::ostream). The call in the application becomes:

auto b = Foo::Factory::create( "MyBar", "MyTemplatedBar" );

Namespaces

When dealing with components in namespaces, you have several ways to invoke DECLARE_COMPONENT. For example, if you have the class Baz::Fun you can declare it as a component class in any of the following ways:

DECLARE_COMPONENT( Baz::Fun )
 
using Baz::Fun;
DECLARE_COMPONENT( Fun )
 
namespace Baz {
  DECLARE_COMPONENT( Fun )
}
 
typedef Baz::Fun BF;
DECLARE_COMPONENT( BF )

In all cases the name of the factory to be passed to the create function will be Baz::Fun.

Custom Factories

When using DECLARE_COMPONENT, we register as factory for our class a function equivalent to

std::unique_ptr<Foo> factory(Args... args) {
  return std::make_unique<Bar>(args...);
}

but it's possible to use custom factory functions. This is a rather convoluted example:

// -- declaration --
struct MyInterface {
  virtual ~MyInterface() = default;
 
  virtual const std::string& name() const = 0;
};
 
struct BaseSetupHelper;
 
struct MyBase : MyInterface {
  using Factory = Gaudi::PluginService::Factory<MyInterface*( const std::string& )>;
 
  const std::string& name() const override { return m_name; }
private:
  friend BaseSetupHelper;
  std::string m_name;
};
 
// -- implementation --
struct MyComponent : MyBase {
  MyComponent() {}
};
 
struct BaseSetupHelper {
  static void setName( MyBase* base, const std::string& name ) { base->m_name = name; }
};
 
namespace
{
  std::unique_ptr<MyInterface> creator( const std::string& name )
  {
    auto p = std::make_unique<MyComponent>();
    BaseSetupHelper::setName( p.get(), name );
    return std::move( p );
  }
  Gaudi::PluginService::DeclareFactory<MyComponent> _{creator};
}
 
// -- use --
void useComponent()
{
  auto c = MyBase::Factory::create( "MyComponent", "TheName" );
  // ...
}