Chapter 5. plugins.conf

The file plugins.conf contains the configuration for various plugins to Firebird.

The file has two types of configuration items with scoped values:

Section 5.1, “Plugin”

Registration of a plugin

Section 5.2, “Config”

Configuration of a plugin

5.1. Plugin

The Plugin item contains the registration information of a plugin.

Syntax 

Plugin = plugin-name
{
  [ Module = module-name ]
  [ RegisterName = register-name ]
  [ Config = config-name ]
  [ ConfigFile = config-filename ]
}

Table 5.1. Plugin configuration parameters
ParameterDescription

plugin-name

Name of the plugin used by Firebird to look up — or, load — the plugin.

module-name

Name of the dynamic library containing the plugin. If not specified, plugin-name is used.

register-name

Name of the plugin in the dynamic library. If not specified, plugin-name is used.

config-name

Name of the Section 5.2, “Config” item in this plugins.conf containing the plugin-specific configuration.

config-filename

Name of the configuration file with the plugin-specific configuration. The file should use simple key-value syntax as used by firebird.conf.

If both Config and ConfigFile are specified, Config will be used.

If neither Config nor ConfigFile are specified, the configuration will be resolved as follows:

  1. If a file module-name.conf exists, that will be used as ConfigFile

  2. Otherwise, Config is set to plugin-name.

These rules also apply to implicitly loaded plugins.

ⓘ
Registration in plugins.conf is optional

For simple cases, the presence of the plugin library in the plugins folder is sufficient for a plugin to work. Those plugins are defined implicitly.

Registration in plugins.conf is only necessary when:

  • The plugin has a different name than the module/library name.

    This can be used if you want to use a different name than the original name, or the module contains multiple plugins with different names.

    For example, in the default plugins.conf this is used for the ChaCha64 plugin, which is part of the ChaCha module.

  • The plugin requires additional configuration.

    For example, in the default plugins.conf this is used to configure the path configuration item of the UDR plugin.

  • You have multiple plugins with the same name; you need to give them different names so Firebird can distinguish between them.