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Project: Building a Modular Plugin System with Templates, CRTP & Concepts — Phase 3 Capstone
TT
TopicTrick Team
Project: Building a Modular Plugin System with Templates, CRTP & Concepts — Phase 3 Capstone
Table of Contents
- Plugin System Architecture
- Step 1: The IPlugin Abstract Interface
- Step 2: Generic
PluginRegistry<T> - Step 3: CRTP Plugin Base for Zero-Overhead Helpers
- Step 4: Concept Constraints on Registration
- Step 5: Dynamic Loading with dlopen/LoadLibrary
- Step 6: Plugin Metadata and Discovery
- Step 7: Hot-Reload Support
- Complete Plugin Implementation Example
- Extension Challenges
- Phase 3 Reflection
Plugin System Architecture
mermaid
Step 1: The IPlugin Abstract Interface
cpp
Step 2: Generic PluginRegistry<T>
cpp
Step 3: CRTP Plugin Base for Zero-Overhead Helpers
cpp
Step 4: Concept Constraints on Registration
cpp
Step 5: Dynamic Loading with dlopen/LoadLibrary
cpp
Complete Plugin Implementation Example
cpp
Extension Challenges
- Plugin versioning: Add
minimum_host_versiontoPluginInfoand reject plugins requiring a newer API than the host provides - Dependency injection: Add
register_service<T>(std::shared_ptr<T>)to the registry and allow plugins to declare dependencies viarequires<T>() - Priority ordering: Add an
int priority()to the plugin interface and sort the execution order automatically - Config file: Parse a
plugins.tomlfile to determine which plugins to load and what config to passinitialize()
Phase 3 Reflection
| Phase 3 Concept | Used In Plugin System |
|---|---|
| Abstract interfaces (Module 11) | IPlugin pure virtual contract |
| CRTP static polymorphism (Module 11) | PluginBase<Derived> zero-overhead helpers |
unique_ptr ownership (Module 6) | Registry owns plugins via unique_ptr<T> |
std::move semantics (Module 3) | Plugin transferred into registry on registration |
Templates + PluginRegistry<T> (Module 13) | Generic registry works for any IPlugin subtype |
| Concepts (Module 19) | ValidPlugin constrains registration |
std::ranges::find_if (Module 15) | Finding plugins by name |
| Variadic compile-time checks | static_assert on plugin names |
Proceed to Phase 4: Multithreading & Atomics →
Part of the C++ Mastery Course — 30 modules from modern C++ basics to expert systems engineering.
