Plugins

SMTK plugins are extensions of ParaView plugins that allow for the definition of SMTK managers and the automatic registration of components to these managers. They are created using the CMake function “add_smtk_plugin”, which requires the developer to explicitly list a registration class known as a “Registrar” and a list of SMTK manager types to which the plugin registers. SMTK plugins can be introduced to a ParaView-based application in several ways. The consuming project can

1) list the plugins in a configuration file that is subsequently read at runtime, deferring the inclusion of plugins to the application’s runtime. This approach requires plugins to reside in certain locations that the application is expected to look, but facilitates the presentation of a plugin to the user without automatically loading the plugin. For this approach, a consuming project can call “generate_smtk_plugin_config_file” to convert the list of smtk plugin targets (which can be a part of the project or imported from another project) described by the global property “SMTK_PLUGINS” into a configuration file. The consuming project can also

2) directly link plugins into the application. This approach pushes the requirement of locating plugins to be a build-time dependency, which can be advantageous for packaging. Plugins that are directly linked to an application cannot be disabled, however (i.e. the target property ENABLED_BY_DEFAULT is ignored, as it is true for all plugins). To use this approach, a consuming project can call “generate_smtk_plugin_library” to to use the list of smtk plugin targets (which can be a part of the project or imported from another project) described by the global property “SMTK_PLUGINS” to generate a library against which the application can link to directly incorporate the associated plugins.

Managers are introduced to SMTK by registering them with the instance of smtk::common::Managers. Upon registration, the singleton instance of smtk::plugin::Manager can be used to register additional plugins to the newly created manager. See smtk/resource/Registrar.cxx for an example of introducing a manager.