PluginsCopy Anchor Link

The nautilus-plugin crate defines the artifact contract for NautilusTrader plug-ins. A plug-in is an independently compiled Rust cdylib. It identifies itself with a versioned manifest and exchanges values across a C-ABI boundary.

The crate covers artifact identity and boundary primitives only. It does not load, register, or run plug-ins. The loading host is an internal Nautilus deployment detail outside this repository.

Artifact contractCopy Anchor Link

A plug-in is a Rust cdylib that exports a single entry symbol, nautilus_plugin_init. The nautilus_plugin! macro generates that symbol together with the static manifest carrying the build identity:

nautilus_plugin::nautilus_plugin! {
    name: "example-plugin",
    vendor: "Nautech",
    version: env!("CARGO_PKG_VERSION"),
}

name and version are required, vendor defaults to an empty string. Invoke the macro once per artifact at module scope, set crate-type = ["cdylib"] in the artifact's Cargo.toml, and depend on the matching nautilus-plugin version.

Manifest compatibilityCopy Anchor Link

nautilus_plugin_init takes an opaque host pointer. It returns a PluginManifest in process-lifetime storage. If the host pointer is null or the call panics, it returns null. PluginManifest::validate checks the invariants a host relies on before registration. It reports each structural problem it finds and fails when:

• abi_version does not equal NAUTILUS_PLUGIN_ABI_VERSION, or build_id.schema_version does not equal PLUGIN_BUILD_ID_VERSION.
• plugin_name or plugin_version is empty.
• Any manifest string is malformed: a null pointer with non-zero length, or bytes that are not valid UTF-8.
• build_id.precision_mode or build_id.fixed_precision differs from the host build.

Precision is validated because it changes model type layout across the boundary. The remaining build identity fields (nautilus-plugin version, rustc version, target triple, and build profile) are diagnostic.

Boundary rulesCopy Anchor Link

Only the #[repr(C)] types in nautilus_plugin::boundary, and #[repr(C)] types built from them, may appear in a signature that crosses the boundary. String, Vec, and Box<dyn Trait> rely on Rust's unstable ABI and must never cross it. Panics must not unwind across the boundary either. The generated entry symbol catches them and returns null.

Under the current ABI, plug-ins are not unloaded, so manifest storage stays valid for the life of the process.

See the crate docs for the boundary and manifest types.