Link or load external libraries

In your plugin, you have different possibilites to use external or 3rd party libraries:

Link to a static library

If you add an appropriate entry to the linker settings of your project file, it is possible to link to external, static libraries. This is for example the case when linking to the dataObject.lib or dataObject.so (Linux) or if using any components of the PointCloudLibrary. When compiling your plugin, the whole implementation of the libary is compiled into your plugin-library and you don’t need to distribute the external file.

Link to a shared library

You can also link to an external shared library by adding the corresponding entry to the linker settings, too. This is for example the case when using OpenCV-methods, which use implicitely do, if you link agains the dataObject. Then you must add the corresponding .lib or .so files to your linker-settings and provide the corresponding .dll or .a file (in debug or release, if possible). Then, you have to take care that itom is able to find the external library. Please consider, that this external library file is not detected relatively to the location of your plugin but relatively to the executable of itom itself. Therefore, you have these possibilites to distribute the external library file:

• Add its containing folder to the path variable of your operating system.

• Add it to any path which already is contained in the path variable of your OS (e.g. system32 on Windows).

• Directly add it to the itom-folder (not recommended, since leads to “crazy” folder structure)

• Direclty add it to the folder lib contained in the itom-folder. The lib*-folder is added to the path variables that are passed to itom at startup. This is a good possibility to provide the external library file, however it can also lead to conflicts with other plugins, that need the same external library, however in an other version. Therefore check whether you can share the same version with other plugins. In the default implementation of itom, there is also some default libraries of Glut, FFTW... that should be used.

• Try to indicate the shared library as delay-loaded module. Than you also adapt the path variable of your plugin to a folder of your choice, before the plugins tries to load the shared library. This is a conflict-free way how to access shared libraries. Let’s make an example: Your plugin MyPlugin lies after compilation in the folder plugin/myPlugin, that is a subfolder of itom. Then put your external shared library file in the subfolder lib of plugin/myPlugin. Then add this path to the current path variable of the application by adding the following code for instance in the constructor or the init-method of your plugin implementation:

  // Get the path to the plugin directory
  QDir dllDir = QCoreApplication::applicationDirPath();
  if( !dllDir.cd("plugins/MyPlugin") )
  {
      dllDir.cdUp();
      dllDir.cd("plugins/MyPlugin");
  }
  dllDir.cd("lib"); //move to lib folder
  QString dllDir2 = QDir::cleanPath(dllDir.filePath(""));
  
  // Add the plugin path to the path environment variable
  char *oldpath = getenv("path");
  char *newpath = (char*)malloc(strlen(oldpath) + dllDir2.size() + 10);
  newpath[0] = 0;
  strcat(newpath, "path=");
  strcat(newpath, dllDir2.toLatin1().data());
  strcat(newpath, ";");
  strcat(newpath, oldpath);
  _putenv(newpath);
  free(newpath);
  

Note

The path variable of your operating system is always copied and then passed to a newly started application. Therefore you can adapt this copy without influencing the overall path environment variable.

Load external library at runtime

The most complicated way to access an external library with respect to the programming cost is to use the command LoadLibrary or the platform-independent Qt-class QLibrary in order load an external library at runtime of your plugin. Then you need to resolve the symbols in the library in order to access them afterwards in a function-call. The advantage of this method however is, that the library can be at any location since you are able to load the library with its absolute filename. See the Qt documentation for details about the class QLibrary, that is recommended to use.

Note

If you link to external libraries, please consider always the license requirements of the external library.