ECL external system services are implemented as exported functions in a .SO (Shared Object). An ECL system service .SO can contain one or more services and (possibly) a single .SO initialization routine. All system service libraries must be thread safe.
All exported functions in the .SO (hereafter referred to as "entry points") must adhere to certain calling and naming conventions. First, entry points must use the "C" naming convention. That is, function name decoration (like that used by C++) is not allowed.
Second, the storage class of __declspec(dllexport) and declaration type _cdecl need to be declared for Windows/Microsoft C++ applications. Typically, SERVICE_CALL is defined as _declspec(dllexport) and SERVICE_API is defined as _cdecl for Windows, and left as nulls for Linux. For example:
Extern "C" _declspec(dllexport) unsigned _cdecl Countchars(const unsigned len, const char *string)
Note: The use of an external SERVICE may be restricted to signed modules. See Code Signing in the ECL Programmer's Guide.
The following is an example prototype for an ECL (.SO) system service initialization routine:
extern "C" void stdcall <functionName> (IEclWorkUnit *w);
The IEclWorkUnit is transparent to the application, and can be declared as Struct IEclWorkUnit; or simply referred to as a void *.
In addition, an initialization routine should retain a reference to its "Work Unit." Typically, a global variable is used to retain this value. For example:
IEclWorkUnit *workUnit;
// global variable to hold the Work Unit reference
extern "C" void SERVICE_API myInitFunction (IEclWorkUnit *w)
{
workUnit = w; // retain reference to "Work Unit"
}