TPluginManager

Class Description

                                                                      
 TPluginManager                                                       
                                                                      
 This class implements a plugin library manager. It keeps track of    
 a list of plugin handlers. A plugin handler knows which plugin       
 library to load to get a specific class that is used to extend the   
 functionality of a specific base class and how to create an object   
 of this class. For example, to extend the base class TFile to be     
 able to read RFIO files one needs to load the plugin library         
 libRFIO.so which defines the TRFIOFile class. This loading should    
 be triggered when a given URI contains a regular expression defined  
 by the handler. Handlers can be defined for example as resources     
 in the .rootrc file, e.g.:                                           
                                                                      
   Plugin.TFile:       ^rfio:   TRFIOFile    RFIO   "<constructor>"   
   Plugin.TSQLServer:  ^mysql:  TMySQLServer MySQL  "<constructor>"   
   +Plugin.TSQLServer: ^pgsql:  TPgSQLServer PgSQL  "<constructor>"   
   Plugin.TVirtualFitter: *     TFitter      Minuit "TFitter(Int_t)"  
                                                                      
 Where the + in front of Plugin.TSQLServer says that it extends the   
 existing definition of TSQLServer, usefull when there is more than   
 one plugin that can extend the same base class. The "<constructor>"  
 should be the constructor or a static method that generates an       
 instance of the specified class. Global methods should start with    
 "::" in their name, like "::CreateFitter()".                         
 Instead of being a shared library a plugin can also be a CINT        
 script, so instead of libDialog.so one can have Dialog.C.            
 The * is a placeholder in case there is no need for a URI to         
 differentiate between different plugins for the same base class.     
 For the default plugins see $ROOTSYS/etc/system.rootrc.              
                                                                      
 Plugin handlers can also be registered at run time, e.g.:            
                                                                      
   gROOT->GetPluginManager()->AddHandler("TSQLServer", "^sapdb:",     
                                         "TSapDBServer", "SapDB",     
             "TSapDBServer(const char*,const char*, const char*)");   
                                                                      
 A list of currently defined handlers can be printed using:           
                                                                      
   gROOT->GetPluginManager()->Print(); // use option="a" to see ctors 
                                                                      
 The use of the plugin library manager removes all textual references 
 to hard-coded class and library names and the resulting dependencies 
 in the base classes. The plugin manager is used to extend a.o.       
 TFile, TSQLServer, TGrid, etc. functionality.