Auto-loading of modules is a feature of CppMicroServices to manage the loading of modules which would normally not be loaded at runtime because of missing link-time dependencies.

In MITK, auto-loading is always enabled and cannot be disabled.

How It Works

For each module being loaded, the following steps are taken:

If the module provides an activator, its ModuleActivator::Load() method is called.
The auto-load paths returned from ModuleSettings::GetAutoLoadPaths() are processed.
For each auto-load path, all modules in that path with the currently loaded module's auto-load directory appended are explicitly loaded.

See the ModuleSettings class for details about auto-load paths. The auto-load directory of a module defaults to the module's library name, but can be customized using a manifest.json file (see Module Properties). For executables, the auto-load directory defaults to the special value main. This allows third-party modules to be auto-loaded during application start-up, without having to reference a special auto-load directory.

Environment Variables

The following environment variables influence the runtime behavior:

US_DISABLE_AUTOLOADING If set, auto-loading of modules is disabled.
US_AUTOLOAD_PATHS A : (Unix) or ; (Windows) separated list of paths from which modules should be auto-loaded.