Cross platform C++ plugins by supplying source code

[FakeTruth]

Shipping a compilier is an interesting idea, but c++ compilers are big.

Yes it's not the best idea

As for how linux handles compatibility is either C interfaces, or compile everything with the distros specified compiler. Unfortunately specifying a particular compiler tends not to work across multiple distress/versions of a distro.

How does the NVIDIA PhysX SDK do this then? It only has a C++ interface in the headers without function pointers, just classes with virtual functions and it supplies precompiled .a and .so files.

The reason you want to stop people using parts that aren't part of the API is because otherwise people complain when their plugin broke because you refactored something. Or changed the contract of a method.

Well that's the risk plugin developers take when not sticking to the plugin API...