For the implementation of a plugin for MERLIC RTE, any programming language may be used which provides a foreign function interface (FFI) to C and compiles to native machine code. In particular, C++ may be used to take advantage of the platform-independent facilities provided by the C++ standard library, for example, for multithreading.

The SDK also includes a support library which provides a higher-level C++ API on top. When using the support library, you do not have to work with the C API directly and writing tests for a plugin is much easier. The support library translates the handle types of the C API either directly into C++ vocabulary types or into aggregate types which support value semantics. Further, the handling of failures through error codes returned from the C API functions is replaced by exception handling to promote branchless control flow. The example plugins provided by MVTec make use of the support library to demonstrate its usage and enhance their readability. For more information, see C++ Plugin Support Library.

The API itself is based around C functions which are documented in detail in the respective header file references.

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Getting Started with Plugin Development

Get information on how to get started with developing communication plugins for use with MERLIC RTE.

Getting Information about the Recipes

Get information about how to query the list of recipe files and the parameters of recipes.

Plugin Configuration

Get information about how to provide a plugin configuration interface for the user.

Building a Plugin

Get information on how to build a communication plugin and how to provide it for MERLIC RTE.

Providing the Plugins for MERLIC RTE

Get information on how to provide your custom communication plugin for MERLIC RTE.