Plugins

Load a shared library at runtime (LoadLibrary on Windows, dlopen on POSIX) and call exported functions that follow the standard var (*)(var) signature.

#include "abscom/abs.h"

Function	Description
var load_library(const char *path)	Load a .dll/.so/.dylib; returns an ABS_LIB object or ABS_ERROR.
var call_lib_func(var lib, const char *func_name, var arg)	Call an exported function with one argument; returns its result.

call_lib_func returns None when lib is not an ABS_LIB object, and ABS_ERROR if the library is unloaded or the symbol is missing.

var lib = load_library("./math_plugins.dll");     /* or .so / .dylib */
if (is_err(lib)) {
    print(v("Could not load:"), lib);             /* includes dlerror() detail */
} else {
    var result = call_lib_func(lib, "plugin_square", v(7));
    print(result);                                /* 49 */
}

Writing a plugin

The exported function must have the Abscom callable signature:

#include "abscom/abs.h"

var plugin_square(var x) {
    return v(x->val.i * x->val.i);
}

• On Windows, build the plugin as a DLL that exports plugin_square (e.g. __declspec(dllexport) or a .def file).
• On POSIX, build it with gcc -shared -fPIC plugin.c -o plugin.so.
• On Linux the host must link -ldl; the Meson, CMake, and Make builds add this automatically. macOS provides dlopen/dlsym via libSystem — no extra flag.

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