What is a Gnucash module? 
-------------------------

A gnucash module is a dynamically loadable libtool library that
defines the following symbols:

    /* what version of the module system interface is assumed */
    int  gnc_module_system_interface;

    /* information about the module's version */ 
    int  gnc_module_current;
    int  gnc_module_revision;
    int  gnc_module_age; 

    /* init is called each time a module is loaded; 
     * 'refcount' is 0 the first time the module is loaded. */ 
    int  gnc_module_init(int refcount);
     
    /* end is called each time the module is unloaded, if present.  
     * 'refcount' is 0 the last time the module is unloaded. */
    void gnc_module_end(int refcount);  

    /* descriptive information */ 
    char  * gnc_module_path(void);
    char  * gnc_module_description(void); 
    

gnc_module_system_interface is the revision number of the interface
listed above (i.e. the names and type signatures of the symbols each
module must define).  The current revision number is 0; all modules
should assign gnc_module_system_interface = 0.  As the interface
evolves, this should allow us to continue to load older modules.

The current, revision, age triplet describe the module version
according to libtool(1) conventions.  To quote from the libtool info
pages:

  1. Start with version information of `0:0:0' for each libtool library.

  2. Update the version information only immediately before a public
     release of your software.  More frequent updates are unnecessary,
     and only guarantee that the current interface number gets larger
     faster.

  3. If the library source code has changed at all since the last
     update, then increment REVISION (`C:R:A' becomes `C:r+1:A').

  4. If any interfaces have been added, removed, or changed since the
     last update, increment CURRENT, and set REVISION to 0.

  5. If any interfaces have been added since the last public release,
     then increment AGE.

  6. If any interfaces have been removed since the last public release,
     then set AGE to 0.

gnc_module_path should return a newly-allocated string containing the
"module path". The module path is a logical path with elements
separated by /.  The path will be used to structure views of available
modules so that similar modules can be grouped together; it may or may
not actually correspond to a filesystem path.  The last element of the
module path is the name of this module.  For example,
  char * path = "gnucash/core/engine";
defines the "engine" module, which is in the gnucash/core group of 
modules. 

gnc_module_description should return a newly-allocated 1-line
description of what the module does.  This can be displayed by GUI
elements to allow users to select modules to load.

While the module system used to have wrappers for scheme access
this functionality is now deprecated. Scheme code should no longer
try to use any gnc-module functionality. All C code that is potentially
useful for scheme has been or can be wrapped using swig. That wrapped
code can be made available to scheme code using guile's load-extension
functionality. For convenience, most of this wrapped code is
accompanied by a scheme module that handles the load-extension part for you.
So in most cases simply calling (use-module (gnucash <module-name>)) will
do the trick.

Initializing the module system
------------------------------

Somewhere at program startup time, you need to call
gnc_module_system_init from C.  This scans the
directories in the GNC_MODULE_PATH and builds a database of the
available modules.

You can rebuild the module database at any time (say, if you know a
new module has been installed or the user has changed the module path
via some in-program mechanism) by calling gnc_module_system_refresh.

Loading modules
---------------

From C call gnc_module_load(path, interface).  This returns a GNCModule
if a qualifying module was successfully loaded, FALSE otherwise.
GNCModule is an opaque type.

A qualifying module is any module whose gnc_module_path matches the
path specification and for whom "interface" falls between
gnc_module_current and (gnc_module_current - gnc_module_age).  If
multiple modules qualify, libtool's rules are used to determine which
to load: the larger of gnc_module_interface, gnc_module_age, and
gnc_module_revision take precedence, in that order.

Module initialization/cleanup
-----------------------------

Each time a module is loaded, its gnc_module_init function is called
with an integer argument, 'refcount'.  The refcount is the number of
times that gnc_module_load has been called on that particular module.
It is 0 the first time gnc_module_load is called on a module.

Any startup/initialization code should be defined in this function.
If this module depends on other modules, put the necessary
gnc_module_load calls in the init function.

If gnc_module_init returns FALSE, the module is immediately unloaded.
Any cleanup must be done within gnc_module_init before returning.

Each time a module is unloaded via gnc_module_unload, its
gnc_module_end function is called with an integer refcount argument.
refcount is 0 if this 'unload' drops the last reference.  In this
case, after the gnc_module_end handler is called the library is
dlclose()-ed.