Plug-ins are installed using a configuration property of the following form:
Ice.Plugin.Name=entry_point [arg ...]
In most cases you can assign an arbitrary name to a plug-in. In the case of IceSSL, however, the plug-in requires that its name be IceSSL.
The value of entry_point is a language-specific representation of the plug-in's factory. In C++, it consists of the name of the shared library or DLL containing the factory function, along with the name of the factory function. In Java, the entry point is the name of the factory class, while in .NET the entry point also includes the assembly.
The language-specific nature of plug-in properties can present a problem when applications that are written in multiple implementation languages attempt to share a configuration file. Ice supports an alternate syntax for plug-in properties that alleviates this issue:
Ice.Plugin.name.cpp=... # C++ plug-in Ice.Plugin.name.java=... # Java plug-in Ice.Plugin.name.clr=... # .NET (Common Language Runtime) plug-in
Plug-in properties having a suffix of .cpp, .java, or .clr are loaded only by the appropriate Ice run time and ignored by others.