Compiling

When you press Compile & Load the terminal runs the bundled C++ compiler on your source, in the background, and hot-loads the result. You never touch a command line — but it helps to know exactly what happens, because that is what the OUTPUT pane is showing you.

The compiler invocation is, in full:

clang++ is the bundled toolchain (a trimmed LLVM/Clang MinGW build shipped inside the app). It is run directly — no shell, no Visual Studio environment, no vcvars — with each argument passed verbatim.

Builds go under the terminal's studies folder (your app-data studies directory, or SHARPNEL_STUDIES_DIR if set). The study name is sanitized to a filesystem- and identifier-safe base first (non-alphanumeric characters become underscores).

The OUTPUT pane shows the compiler's standard output and standard error merged together, followed by the load result:

• Clean build: if the compiler printed nothing, the pane shows Compiled OK., then the green ✓ Loaded study '<id>' — added to Add Study.
• Warnings: a build can succeed with warnings — the warning text appears, and the study still loads.
• Errors: the compiler's error lines print (file, line, message — the usual Clang diagnostics), then a red ✗ Build failed. Nothing is loaded. Fix and press again.
• Built but wouldn't load: a rare case where the DLL compiled but failed ABI validation on load — the pane shows ✗ Built, but load failed: … with the reason.

A compile is asynchronous and one-at-a-time: the button disables while a build is running and re-enables when it finishes.

The Study Editor is the supported path and needs no setup. If you would rather build a DLL yourself and drop it in, the terminal will still load it: place the compiled .dll in the studies folder and approve it from Custom Studies › Manage Plugins….

• Trust gate. A study the editor built from your own source is trusted automatically. A DLL you drop in from elsewhere is quarantined — its code is never loaded — until you explicitly trust it in Manage Plugins. That is the consent surface for third-party binaries.
• ABI validation. On load the host resolves and validates every required export; any missing symbol rejects the whole plugin, and an incompatible ABI version is refused cleanly.
• Match the target. Build a 64-bit DLL against the current sharpnel_study_sdk.h. The bundled editor builds with clang++ -static as above; if you use a different toolchain, embed its runtime the same way so the DLL has no external runtime dependency.

• Troubleshooting — the compiler-not-found banner, include errors, and other failure modes.
• Worked Examples — complete studies you can paste and build.