A. A shareable shared library is a self contained library of function that can be delivered by more than one plugin. A library is a set of functions and/or classes and methods that implement an Application Programming Interface (API). A shared library is one that makes its functionality available to other plugins through some sort of run-time sharing service. In our case it’s the oik-lib: shared library manager. A shareable shared library is a library where all of the functionality that the shared library offers can be delivered by more than one plugin, without recourse to the original plugin that first delivered the functionality. Conversely a non-shareable shared library is one where the plugin offers shared functionality but where the library’s APIs depend on functions that are provided by the plugin. Shareable shared libraries are preferential to non-shareable shared libraries since they reduce dependency on a particular plugin.
Examples
- oik-admin is a shareable shared library; it is self contained
- oik-sc-help, in its early form (v2.6), is a non-shareable shared library; it is dependent upon an include file from the oik base plugin
- bobbfunc is a hybrid shared library. Most of the functions are shareable, but there are some APIs that depend on the oik base plugin as they have not yet been converted from using oik_require() to oik_require_lib().
