1dynload_overview(3)                  Coin                  dynload_overview(3)
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NAME

6       dynload_overview - Dynamic Loading of Extension Nodes When Coin tries
7       to get hold of a node type object (SoType) for a class based on the
8       name string of the node type, it will - if no such node type has been
9       initialized yet - scan the file system for a dynamically loadable
10       extension node with that given name. This can be completely disabled by
11       setting the environment variable COIN_NO_SOTYPE_DYNLOAD to a positive
12       integer value, new from Coin v2.5.0.
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14       On UNIX, extensions nodes are regular .so files. On Win32, extension
15       nodes are built as DLLs. On Mac OS X systems, extension nodes are built
16       as .dylib files. (Note: The extension nodes have to be built using the
17       flag '-dynamiclib', not '-bundle'.)
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19       Whether the dynamically loadable objects should be named with or
20       without the 'lib' prefix is optional. Both schemes will work.
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22       People don't usually program in a way so that they instantiate new
23       nodes through the node class' SoType object, but that is the way nodes
24       are created when model files are loaded. This means that for all Coin
25       applications that load model files, the custom extension nodes will
26       automatically be supported for the model files without you having to
27       modify their source code and rebuild the applications.
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29       See ftp://ftp.coin3d.org/pub/coin/src/dynloadsample.tar.gz for an
30       example using two dynamically loadable extension nodes. You only use an
31       examiner viewer to view the two extension nodes in action.
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33       Only a limited set of C++ compilers are supported as of yet. This is
34       because, to initialize the extension node, it is necessary to know
35       something about how the C++ compiler mangles the initClass symbol. If
36       we don't know that, there is no way to locate the initClass method in
37       the library, which means the extension node can not make itself known
38       to the type system.
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40       If your C++ compiler is not supported, the source file to add support
41       for a new compiler in is src/misc/cppmangle.icc. It is fairly trivial
42       to add support for new compilers, but if you don't understand how, just
43       ask us about it. Patches with support for new compilers are of course
44       very welcome.
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46       See also:
47           SoType
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49       Since:
50           Coin 2.0
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52Version 2.5.0                     3 Oct 2007               dynload_overview(3)
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