Yehia uses a single namespace for all applications. However, this namespace is hierarchical and thus every application or library can use a sub-namespace for its plugins.

How this works is best made clear with a real-world example. The database access library GQL, which uses Yehia, is using database drivers to provide transparent access to different relational databases. This drivers aren't compiled into the library, but implemented as plugins. The library uses the Yehia sub-namespace gql and gql.drivers for its database drivers. As you can see, the namespaces can be nested into each other to form a tree-like structure, just like the filesystem. However, Yehia uses the dot ('.') instead of the slash ('/') for seperating the plugin namespace "directories". To complete the above example, the full path of an database driver then is, for example gql.drivers.pg (this would be the PostgreSQL driver).

This way it is possible for all applications and each subsystem within an application to install their plugins without interfering with the others.

The plugin manager is the central instance that, well, manages the plugins. It keeps track of the currently loaded and available plugins, loads and releases (unloads) plugins on request and emits signals when plugins are loaded, released, become available or unavailable.

The plugin manager supports different types of plugins through plugin loaders. The default plugin loader is able to load shared C++ libaries. A plugin or application may register other plugin loader to implement loading of a different kind of plugins. This is used in the implementation of extension language plugin loaders that are able to load, say, a Python script as a plugin.