我应该在OSX上使用CFPlugin还是dlopen（）作为C ++的插件

Question

I need to make a plugin library on OSX which shall be loaded at run time. The library is mostly in C++. The way plugin needs to behave is that the program will scan a directory and search for plugins. Now it needs to get some information from plugins (like type) and needs to create instance based on that.

I searched for options and got these two for OSX - dlopen() and CFPlugin . The advantage with dlopen() is that we don't need to extend our base abstract class (which we have to if we use CFPlugin ). The disadvantage is that we need to load the library before knowing its type.

With CFPlugin , Apple has not clearly mentioned that is it loaded before we create its instance or not. We can call CFPlugInFindFactoriesForPlugInTypeInPlugIn function to know all the functions capable of creating instance. But is the plugin loaded before it searches for available functions?

Answer 1

Finally going ahead with dlopen() to load the *.bundle plugin. Advantage of using bundle is that *.plist shall always be embedded in it and any information we need before loading the bundle can be obtained from the plist file.