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12.2 Loading Dynamic Objects

Warning: The load directive and extension capability is considered a “technology preview” in this release of GNU Make. We encourage you to experiment with this feature and we appreciate any feedback on it. However we cannot guarantee to maintain backward-compatibility in the next release. Consider using GNU Guile instead for extending GNU Make (see The guile Function).

Many operating systems provide a facility for dynamically loading compiled objects. If your system provides this facility, GNU make can make use of it to load dynamic objects at runtime, providing new capabilities which may then be invoked by your makefile.

The load directive is used to load a dynamic object. Once the object is loaded, a “setup” function will be invoked to allow the object to initialize itself and register new facilities with GNU make. A dynamic object might include new make functions, for example, and the “setup” function would register them with GNU make’s function handling system.

• The load Directive
• How Loaded Objects Are Remade
• Loaded Object Interface
• Example Loaded Object