Plugin basics
A Geronimo plugin is a jar-structured file that contains a META-INF/geronimo-plugin.xml descriptor following this schema:
Most plugins are Geronimo modules which means they include a classloader description, service configurations ("gbeans"), and possibly classes and resources. For instance, if you deploy a javaee application on geronimo, it turns into a geronimo module containing the description of the app's classloader, gbean configurations for the javaee components (web apps, ejbs, etc), and the classes and resources from your application. The additional information in the Geronimo plugin descriptor includes:
- Category (descriptive)
- Description
- License
- Dependencies: these will be automatically downloaded and installed when the plugin is installed. These are usually the same as the dependencies in the module classloader description.
- Prerequisites: These must be present before the plugin can be installed. This can be used to force the user to install an incompatibly licensed jar or to configure a modules such as a database pool before installing a dependent plugin.
- Obsoletes: These dependencies will be uninstalled before installing a plugin.
- Additional information about how the plugin fits into the server.
Additional information
- Content to be installed in a config.xml file to allow additional customization of gbeans, typically through properties.
- Default property values to be installed in a config-substitutions.properties file.
- Artifact aliases allowing one plugin or other artifact to replace another.
- Description of plugin content to be unpacked into the server. Plugins that are not modules typically exist only to install such content.
Where does this additional configuration information go?
A geronimo installation typically can run multiple jvms for different purposes. For instance, there's the main JavaEE server, a command line deploy tool, and a JavaEE application client container. Each of these requires configuration information from different files. The set of such information sufficient to configure such a jvm is collected together in a "server instance". In a geronimo server, these are represented by gbeans in the plugin module. When assembling a server using maven these are represented with xml in the maven pom. In any case, these have names, and for the plugin metadata specific to a server instance, you specify which instance you intend using the server attribute. This defaults to "default", the JavaEE server.
Finding a plugin
Plugins are listed in plugin catalogs which contain information about the plugins (typically name and description) and where to get the plugin.
Plugins are normally stored in plugin repositories which act much like maven2 repositories. The most common examples of plugin repositories are the following:
- Your local maven repository if you have built geronimo or used maven to package plugins.
- The Apache plugin repository containing all the plugins packages by the Apache Geronimo project.
- Another geronimo server running the jetty or tomcat plugin-console plugin.
Look in to Administering plugins for more details.