Pluginrig

Pluginrig is a modular plugin management and execution framework designed to host, load, and sandbox third-party extensions within software applications. It defines a standard plugin interface, provides discovery and dependency resolution, supports versioning, and enforces isolation to prevent plugin code from destabilizing the host or other plugins.

Its architecture typically includes a core engine, plugin manifests, and an adapter layer that bridges host APIs to plugin implementations. Plugins are packaged with a manifest describing metadata, capabilities, required dependencies, and lifecycle hooks. The framework can support cross-language plugins through bridges or adapters, enabling plugins written in different languages to run inside a unified runtime. Loading follows a dependency graph, with the engine resolving versions, validating permissions, and orchestrating initialization and teardown. Hot-reloading and version pinning may be supported in some implementations.

Security and stability are central concerns. Plugins run in a sandboxed environment with resource quotas and optional process separation. The host enforces a permission model, monitors activity, and provides error handling that isolates failures without crashing the entire system.

Pluginrig is described as a general concept for extensible software ecosystems. Real-world implementations vary in scope and design, but share the goal of enabling safe, scalable, and flexible plugin extensibility across diverse domains such as audio workstations, IDEs, 3D pipelines, and data analysis tools.

See also: plugin architecture, extension systems, modular software design.