Mercurial > pidgin.yaz
view doc/C-HOWTO.dox @ 12218:9cbc5967fbfd
[gaim-migrate @ 14520]
Crush some warnings. I ran this by Bartosz Oler and made some corrections at his suggestion. I'll be submitting this upstream and merging any changes they suggest/make-when-accepting.
committer: Tailor Script <tailor@pidgin.im>
| author | Richard Laager <rlaager@wiktel.com> |
|---|---|
| date | Fri, 25 Nov 2005 00:32:45 +0000 |
| parents | 51b87da4e9f0 |
| children | 8f910263b4bb |
line wrap: on
line source
/** @page c-howto C Plugin HOWTO @section Introduction C plugins are native plugins. They have complete access to all of the api, and can do basically whatever they want. All of the protocol plugins, as well as the perl and tcl loader plugins are written in C. @section getting_started Getting Started To develop a plugin you need to have the Gaim source code. It is generally a good idea to compile against the same version of Gaim that you are running. You may also want to develop against CVS. While we do NOT recomend this for normal users, it makes sense for plugin developers to use CVS to ensure their plugins works with the most recent changes in Gaim. A lot tends to change between versions and it's much easier to fix your plugin as things change rather than waiting until the release. But please do not abuse CVS. Gaim puts a lot of strain on Source Forge's servers, and we do not need to add anymore to it. If you choose not to head my warnings and develop against a version of Gaim that is different from what you're running, then your Gaim source must at the very least be configured. Note that just running configure will generally set the prefix to /usr/local. This shouldn't be a problem, except that most packages compile and install Gaim with /usr as the prefix. All plugins must have @c GAIM_PLUGINS defined. You can choose to include @c internal.h to do this, but if you choose to do it this way it must be included before any other Gaim files. Likewise, if you choose to manually define @c GAIM_PLUGINS, the definition must be before including any Gaim files. Failure to do so will produce the 'plugin foo could not be loaded for an unknown reason'. This is one of the hardest unknown reasons to track down, so let's try to avoid it at all costs ;) @section hello_world Hello World! I know every tutorial has a hello world, so why should Gaim be any different? @code #define GAIM_PLUGINS #include <glib.h> #include "notify.h" #include "plugin.h" #include "version.h" static gboolean plugin_load(GaimPlugin *plugin) { gaim_notify_message(plugin, GAIM_NOTIFY_MSG_INFO, "Hello World!", "This is the Hello World! plugin :)", NULL, NULL, NULL); return TRUE; } static GaimPluginInfo info = { GAIM_PLUGIN_MAGIC, GAIM_MAJOR_VERSION, GAIM_MINOR_VERSION, GAIM_PLUGIN_STANDARD, NULL, 0, NULL, GAIM_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, "core-hello_world", "Hello World!", VERSION, "Hello World Plugin", "Hello World Plugin", NULL, GAIM_WEBSITE, plugin_load, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL }; static void init_plugin(GaimPlugin *plugin) { } GAIM_INIT_PLUGIN(hello_world, init_plugin, info); @endcode Okay, so what does all this mean? We start off by defining @c GAIM_PLUGINS like described before. Next we include glib.h, mainly for gboolean and the glib wrappers of the standard c types. We could just use stdio and use an int for the gboolean but since Gaim uses glib internally, we might as well do the same. Next, we include plugin.h which has all the plugin specific stuff that we need. For example @c GaimPlugin, @c GaimPluginInfo, @c GAIM_PLUGIN_MAGIC, and @c GAIM_INIT_PLUGIN(). Our last include is version.h which defines @c GAIM_MAJOR_VERSION, and @c GAIM_MINOR_VERSION. There is not much you need to know about these, except that they are required and will stop your plugin from crashing Gaim when something has changed that you plugin does not know about yet. plugin_load is not required. It is called when the plugin is loaded so that you can initialize any variables and so on. But in this plugin we'll just use it to display a message. Next we have the @c GaimPluginInfo structure. Every plugin MUST have one of these. Below is a code snipet of the same struct used in @c hello_world with comments describing what each is. @code static GaimPluginInfo info = { GAIM_PLUGIN_MAGIC, /* Plugin magic, this should always be GAIM_PLUGIN_MAGIC. This value gets incremented inside of Gaim so that plugins that haven't been updated yet will fail to load and avoid potential crashes while loading old plugins. */ GAIM_MAJOR_VERSION, /* This is also defined in Gaim. It helps Gaim's plugin system determine what version of Gaim this plugin was compiled for, and whether loading it will cause problems. */ GAIM_MINOR_VERSION, /* See previous */ GAIM_PLUGIN_STANDARD, /* GaimPluginType, there are 4 different values for this field. The first is GAIM_PLUGIN_UNKNOWN, which should not be used. The second is GAIM_PLUGIN_STANDARD, this is the value most plugins will use. Next we have GAIM_PLUGIN_LOADER, this is the type you want to load if your plugin is going to make it possible to load non- native plugins. For example, perl and tcl. Last, we have GAIM_PLUGIN_PROTOCOL. If your plugin is going to allow the user to connect to another network, this is the type you'd want to use. */ NULL, /* This field is the ui requirement. This value should be a string. If you're writing a core plugin, this should be NULL and the plugin should not contain any ui specific code. If you're writing a gtk plugin, you can use the GAIM_GTK_PLUGIN_TYPE macro. All other ui plugins are dependent on their ui implementation, and is outside the scope of this howto. */ 0, /* This field is for plugin flags. Currently, the only flag available to plugins is invisible (GAIM_PLUGIN_FLAG_INVISIBLE). This plugin is currently used by the ssl plugin, the tcl loader, and the perl loaded. It causes the plugin to NOT appear in the list of plugins in Gaim's preferences window. */ NULL, /* This is a GList of plugin dependencies. In other words, a GList of plugin id's that your plugin depends on. If your plugin does not have any dependencies, set this value to NULL. */ GAIM_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, /* This is the priority Gaim with give your plugin. There are three possible values for this field, GAIM_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, GAIM_PRIORITY_HIGHEST, and GAIM_PRIORITY_LOWEST */ "core-hello_world", /* This is your plugin's id. There is a whole page dedicated to this in the 'related-pages' section of Gaim's API docs. */ "Hello World!", /* This is your plugin name. This is what will be displayed for your plugin in the ui. */ 1.1, /* This is the version of your plugin. For the sake of simplicity, I'm using the Gaim version. */ "Hello World Plugin", /* This is the summary of your plugin. It should be a short little blurb. The ui determines where, if at all, to display this. */ "Hello World Plugin", /* This is the description of your plugin. It can be as long and as descriptive as you like. And like the summary, it's up to the ui where, if at all, to display this. */ NULL, /* This is where you can put your name and email address. (You are the author right?) */ GAIM_WEBSITE, /* This is the website for the plugin. This is helpful if users find bugs in your plugin so they can help to bring them to your attention. */ plugin_load, /* This is a pointer to a function for Gaim to call when it is loading your plugin. It should be in the form of: gboolean function_name(GaimPlugin *plugin) Returning TRUE will tell Gaim to continue loading your plugin, while FALSE will tell Gaim to stop trying to load it. */ NULL, /* Same as above except it is called when Gaim tries to unload your plugin. It should be in the form of: gboolean function_name(GaimPlugin *plugin) Where returning TRUE will tell Gaim to continue unloading and false to not continue unloading your plugin. */ NULL, /* Similar to the two above members, except this is called when Gaim tries to destory the plugin. This is generally only called when for some reason or another the plugin fails to probe correctly. It should be in the form of: void function_name(GaimPlugin *plugin) */ NULL, /* This is a pointer to a ui specific struct. For a gtk plugin it will be a pointer to a GaimGtkPluginUiInfo struct. */ NULL, /* This is a pointer to either a GaimPluginLoaderInfo struct or a GaimPluginProtocolInfo struct, and is beyond the scope of this document. */ NULL, /* This is a pointer to a GaimPluginUiInfo struct. It is a core/ui split way for core plugins to have a ui configuration frame. You can find an example of this code in plugins/pluginpref_example.c */ NULL /* Finally the last member of the structure, is a function pointer where you can define menu entries for 'Tools->Plugin Actions'. It should be in the form of: GList *function_name(GaimPlugin *plugin, gpointer context) It should return a GList of GaimPluginActions. */ }; @endcode Finally we have @c init_plugin and @c GAIM_INIT_PLUGIN. @c init_plugin is a function that gets called when Gaim probes the plugin. Most plugins will add their preferences to the pref tree here, more about that later. @c GAIM_INIT_PLUGIN is a macro that EVERY plugin MUST have. @c GAIM_INIT_PLUGIN tells Gaim some very basic things about your plugin, like what name to use if the plugin is compiled staticly, the @c init_plugin function, and the name of the @c GaimPluginInfo structure. As you may have guess this also gets read when Gaim is probing your plugin. If this is missing you will get the infamous "plugin unloadable for unknown reasons", so do not forget it. */