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Plugin

What is it?

Mantid is designed to be extensible by anyone who can write a simple library in C++. There are several areas that have been built so that new version and instances can be added just by copying a library with the new code into the plugin directory before starting mantid. This eliminates the need to recompile the main Mantid code or any user interfaces derived from it when you want to extend it by, for example, adding a new algorithm.

What is a plugin?

A plugin is a library of one or more classes that include the functionality that you need. Within the outputs of the Mantid project Several of the libraries we deliver are created as plugins. Examples are:

• MantidAlgorithms - Contains the general algorithms

• MantidDataHandling - Contains the basic data loading and saving algorithms

• MantidNexus - Contains the algorithms for handling nexus files

• MantidDataObjects - Contains the definitions of the standard workspaces

How can you extend Mantid?

The following areas have been designed to be easily extensible through using plugins. Each one contains more details in case you wish to create one of your own.

• Algorithm

• Workspace

• Unit

How do you create a plugin?

There is nothing special about the library you build in order for it to be used as a plugin, as long as it contains one or more algorithms, workspaces or units (they can be mixed) they will automatically be registered and available for use.

How does it work?

Each of the extensible units within Mantid shares a base class that all further objects of that type inherit from. For example all algorithms must inherit from the Algorithm base class. This allows all uses of those objects to work through the interface of the base class, and the user (or other code) does not need to know what the algorithm actually is, just that it is an algorithm.

In addition each of the extensible units has a macro that adds some code that automatically registers the class with the appropriate dynamic factory. This code executes immediately when the library is loaded and is what makes you new objects available for use. All of these macros start DECLARE and, for example, the one for algorithms is:

• DECLARE_ALGORITHM(classname) (or namespace::classname if the declaration is not enclosed in the algorithm’s namespace)

Category: Concepts