Module System API
Official

See:
Description

Module System API

org.openide.modules

NetBeans is capable of being extended by pluggable modules providing additional functionality.

What is New (see all changes)?

• May 14 '10 Documented the new native library lookup mechanism

  You can now distribute native libraries into architecture and OS specific directories under modules/lib as documented in the documentation. The functionality is actually provided by the org.netbeans.bootstrap module as of version 2.33, which will be part of NetBeans 6.9 release.

• Jan 6 '10 Simplified ModuleInstall lifecycle

  The ModuleInstall methods installed and updated, while previously deprecated, will no longer be called at all. ModuleInstall instances will also no longer be serialized to disk. Versioning-related attributes are no longer stored in config/Modules/*.xml files.

• Jan 6 '10 Added InstalledFileLocator.locateAll

  You can now locate multiple variants of an installed file path from different clusters.

• Apr 6 '09 Dependency class made serializable

  Dependency now implements Serializable

• Jan 6 '09 Added annotation @PatchedPublic

  Added @PatchedPublic to request that the module system treat binary references to a method as public even if in source is is not public.

Use Cases

How a classpath of my module is constructed?

The NetBeans is defacto a container that manages individual module's lifecycle and other runtime aspects. One of the important things is that it creates a runtime classpath for provided modules based on dependencies they specify in their manifests. The overview of the runtime infrastructure is a good starting place for everyone who wishes to learn more about the NetBeans runtime container behaviour.

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

Group of property interfaces

Interface Name	In/Out	Stability	Specified in What Document?
RevertFSModifications	Exported	Under Development	FileObjects created on XML layer now support a new attribute removeWritables returning an instance of Callable which removes the local writable version of the given FileObject thus reverting the folder or file to its initial state as defined in XML layers. Please note that is not possible to reset FileObject's attributes.

Group of systemproperty 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.