Well, this is actually quite easy, especially if you are used to the C interface. There are a few tricks though. In this HOWTO, we assume that you have never used the C interface, and that you are a beginner with the C++ interface.

Files and tools necessary

The header SWI-cpp.h

For the developper, the C++ interface is merely one header: SWI-cpp.h. Its location depends on your version and distribution. For example, on Fedora 21, 64-bits, I found it in /usr/lib64/swipl-6.4.1/. Note that depending on your distribution, you may need to install an additional package to have it. For example under Fedora, swipl is provided by the package pl but the header is provided by pl-devel.

The linker and compiler wrapper swipl-ld

swipl-ld will help you compile and link your code without having to worry for the location of library files, or the compilation options.

The pkgconfig specification file swipl.pc

This file will help you to get the compilation options right.

Makefile example

Here is a real world Makefile. Note that I need to give swipl-ld the option -ld g++ because otherwise it uses the C compiler which is unable to link with the C++ libraries.

CXXFLAGS=--std=c++11
CXXFLAGS+=$(shell pkg-config swipl --cflags)
LD=swipl-ld
LDFLAGS=--std=c++11 -shared -ld g++
SRC=$(wildcard *.cpp)
OBJ=$(SRC:.cpp=.o)
EXEC=interp.so
DESTDIR=..

all : $(EXEC)

$(EXEC) : $(OBJ)
        $(LD) $(LDFLAGS) -o $@ $^
        mv $(EXEC) $(DESTDIR)

database.o: database.cpp table.h table-kfdesc.h table-kprocs.h \
 table-kfs.h update-add-entry.h update.h update-delete-entry.h filemode.h \
 table-kmem.h database.h update-change-value.h
# ... a lot more of dependencies specification here

.PHONY : clean

clean :
        rm -rf *.o

mrproper : clean
        rm -f $(EXEC)

FAQ

How do I use the library? consult/1 doesn't work...

Indeed. You have to use load_foreign_library/1. For example, if your library is libs/mylib.so, you have to do ?- load_foreign_library('libs/mylib').

My projects compiles but Prolog complains about missing objects when I load it. Why?

You have others, non-prolog, symbols that are still unresolved after loading the library in Prolog. You can remove the option -shared from swipl-ld to see those. The linker will complain about the missing function main (which is normal) and missing prolog symbols (which is normal). You can filter the output against the pattern "PL_" to get rid of the latter and see what are the others symbols that could not be resolved (which is NOT normal).