(v13) Building a plugin with Microsoft tools

This page applies to Harlequin v13.1r0 and later; and to Harlequin MultiRIP but not Harlequin Core

This section discusses in detail the use of Microsoft's tools for plugin development. Though it illustrates the development process with examples, you will undoubtedly need to modify them when writing your own plugin. The examples cover the development process for Intel‐based PCs.

From plugin kit v20.2r2 the use of MSVC 2013 is the supported and recommended version to build a plugin. Earlier versions are not supported.

Both the Makefile and VS project files are supplied in the plugin kit. The VS project files are contained within PlugKitVcproj.zip .

The object of a plugin build is to produce a DLL. The DLL will be the output of the linker. The linker combines the compiled versions of the C source files, the resource file (there is usually only one), and the .def file which provides linker directives. The EXPORT directive names functions visible from out‐ side the linked object. In this case, only the name PLUGIN , the plugin entry point, is exported.

Note: When you build the example plugins using supplied VS projects, various linker tool warnings (LNK4204 ) are displayed. These warnings are benign and can be ignored. The reason for these warning are because the library files are supplied with no debug access.