Overview (NetBeans Modules API) - NetBeans API Javadoc 5.0.0

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NetBeans Modules API

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Description

Modules API

org.openide.modules The IDE is capable of being extended by pluggable modules providing additional functionality.

What is New (see all changes)?

Jul 7 '05 Enhanced support for OS specific modules
Modules can now express dependency on more operating system types than those that were available previously. Now there is org.openide.modules.os.PlainUnix token for all unixes but MacOSX and org.openide.modules.os.OS2 for OS/2. For more details read here.
Jun 7 '05 Branding files used during startup have new location
Due to split of openide.jar some important branding files used during startup change their location. Especially the to splash screen picture, location and color of progress bar and the application icon are now in org.netbeans.core.startup package. Here is an example of the branding as used by NetBeans IDE.
Jun 4 '05 openide.jar is gone, update your module dependencies!

The monolithic openide.jar has been split into many small JAR files and most of them were made autoload modules. That means they are loaded only on demand, which is going to simplify end of life of parts that are no longer needed.

The layout of files on disk changed and their content as well, but these changes shall have no effect on classes from org.openide packages during runtime. Modules using them will run unmodified. Althrough there will be printed warnings about upgraded module dependencies - one is adviced to use ant fix-dependencies in his projectized module to modify the nbproject/project.xml. The manifest's OpenIDE-Module-IDE-Dependencies attribute is deprecated and shall no longer be used. Enumerate the individual split submodules instead, as is done by the fix-dependencies task. Moreover one can depend on OpenIDE-Module-Requires: org.openide.modules.ModuleFormat1 to express that it requires current format of module manifests - this tag is automatically inserted when running in projectized system.

The current layout of platform cluster directory is:
- lib/boot.jar contains what it used to have together with module system runtime independent of other NetBeans APIs.
- lib/org-openide-util.jar is next to boot.jar to provide the basic infrastructure used by boot.jar.
- lib/org-openide-modules.jar provides the APIs that the boot.jar implements.
- core/core.jar is loaded dynamically by the boot.jar and contains most of the startup code and the NetBeans dependent part of module system. For its implementation it needs filesystems which are along as well.
- core/org-openide-filesystems.jar the filesystems API is needed for the standard launch code to read module config files and listen to changes in their amount or content.
- modules/org-openide-nodes.jar and other openide libraries are now turned into real modules.
- modules/org-netbeans-core.jar is also a module and contains the rest of original core.jar. It is likely that this one is going to be split even more, as the UI could be separated to core/ui, etc.
Apr 11 '05 Friend Modules
A module can now restrict the list of modules that can access its public packages, by enumerating their code names in manifest.
Aug 11 '04 Allow a module to be run only on some class of operating systems
Modules can now declare that they run only on a specific version of operating system by requesting a presence of org.openide.modules.os.MacOSX, org.openide.modules.os.Unix or org.openide.modules.os.Windows token in their manifest:
```
                OpenIDE-Module-Requires: org.openide.modules.os.Unix
            
```
Such a module will then be enabled only on specified class of operating systems. See also the modules api description.

Use Cases

Exported Interfaces

This table lists all of the module exported APIs with defined stability classifications. It is generated based on answers to questions about the architecture of the module. Read them all...

Group of java interfaces

Interface Name	In/Out	Stability	Specified in What Document?
ModulesAPI	Exported	Official	.../org/openide/modules/doc-files/api.html
CoreModulesAPI	Exported	Friend	.../org/netbeans/core/modules/package.html

Group of property interfaces

Interface Name	In/Out	Stability	Specified in What Document?
netbeans.systemclassloader.patches	Exported	Friend	Classpath appended to the system class loader. Used for automated testing infrastructure.
netbeans.cache.manifests	Exported	Private	By default true, may be turned off to disable manifest caching.
netbeans.patches.MODULE.CODE.NAME.BASE	Exported	Friend	Patch directories or JARs to add to the class loader for a module, besides `patches/MODULE-CODE-NAME-BASE/*.jar`.
netbeans.preresolve.classes	Exported	Private	If true, all module classes are forcibly loaded at startup, to help detect possible linkage errors.
org.netbeans.core.modules.NbInstaller.noAutoDeps	Exported	Private	Disables automatic module dependency upgrades.
org.netbeans.core.modules	Exported	Private	If set to `0`, enables logging for the module system.
org.netbeans.core.modules.NbInstaller.NO_COMPAT_AUTO_TRANSITIVE_DEPS	Exported	Private	Disabled automatic transitive class loader dependencies for old modules.
netbeans.modules.quiet	Exported	Private	Avoids text messaging (other than `ErrorManager` logging) to the console from the module system.
netbeans.moduleitem.dontverifyclassloader	Exported	Private	Suppresses checks to ensure that module section classes are actually loaded from the module itself.
netbeans.security.nocheck	Exported	Friend	Suppress security checks in the VM, even from "untrusted" code.
netbeans.classloader.verbose	Exported	Private	Prints messages when resources or classes are loaded from JARs.
netbeans.cache.layers	Exported	Private	Used to control the XML layer cache mechanism. Value may be a fully-qualified class name to load as a manager (implement `org.netbeans.core.projects.cache.LayerCacheManager`), or `-` to disable caching and always parse the XML layers directly. Current default is to use a binary cache manager.

Group of dtd interfaces

Interface Name	In/Out	Stability	Specified in What Document?
module-status-1_0.dtd	Exported	Under Development	.../dtds/module-status-1_0.dtd `-//NetBeans//DTD Module Status 1.0//EN`
module-auto-deps-1_0.dtd	Exported	Under Development	.../dtds/module-auto-deps-1_0.dtd `-//NetBeans//DTD Module Automatic Dependencies 1.0//EN`
filesystem-1_1.dtd	Exported	Stable	.../www.netbeans.org/dtds/filesystem-1_1.dtd `-//NetBeans//DTD Filesystem 1.1//EN`

Implementation Details

Read more about the implementation in the answers to architecture questions.