Plug-in frameworks

Software developers can use the following plug-in frameworks (organized here by programming language) to add plug-in capability to their applications:

[edit] C++

• Boost Extension- Boost C++ plug-in framework, available from boost sandbox
• FxEngine Framework—Open C++ dataflow processing framework for audio, video, signal, etc.
• Qt Plug-Ins—part of Nokia's Qt Framework
• OmniPeek Plug-in Wizard—creates plug-ins for WildPackets' OmniPeek Network Analyzer
• Pugg open Source C++ framework for plug-in management
• OFX an open standard for visual effects plug-ins.
• A cross-platform plug-in framework accompanying a series of articles by Gigi Sayfan in Dr. Dobb's Journal.

[edit] Delphi Plug-ins appeared as early as the mid 1970s, when the EDT text editor running on the Unisys VS/9 operating system using the Univac 90/60 series mainframe computer provided the ability to run a program from the editor and to allow such a program to access the editor buffer, thus allowing an external program to access an edit session in memory. The plug-in program could make calls to the editor to have it perform text-editing services upon the buffer that the editor shared with the plug-in. The Waterloo Fortran compiler used this feature to allow interactive compilation of Fortran programs edited by EDT.
Very early PC software applications to incorporate plug-in functionality included HyperCard and QuarkXPress on the Macintosh, both released in 1987. In 1988, Silicon Beach Software included plug-in functionality in Digital Darkroom and SuperPaint, and Ed Bomke coined the term plug-in.
Currently^[update], programmers typically implement plug-in functionality using shared libraries compulsorily installed in a place prescribed by the host application. HyperCard supported a similar facility, but more commonly included the plug-in code in the HyperCard documents (called stacks) themselves. Thus the HyperCard stack became a self-contained application in its own right, distributable as a single entity that end-users could run without the need for additional installation-steps.concats 00923224479031