Re: [ jEdit-users ] Re: jEdit / education / world domination

[Andreas S. <an...@jb...>]

Hi Geeks

I could not follow the entire discussion but I would
like to give you some insight how JBoss creates a
dynamic deployment at runtime which has some
similarities to the plugin issues.

JBoss uses Java Management eXtension (JMX) as
communication bus between the modules of JBoss.
Thus it is possible to change the implementation of
the modules and they can still work together as long
as the needed methods are available because the
references to the module is resolved when the call
is made.

Transferred this to jEdit this would allow to change
jEdit as well as the plugins without depending directly
on each other and thus jEdit can change the API of
the textarea etc. and still old and new plugins can still
work with jEdit. It would also allow plugins to lookup
other plugins and investigate their API and work with
it without directly now the real implementation. So a
project management plugin could look up a pretty
formatter and then ask it to make a nice layout and this
on every file in the project. This sounds simple but is
powerful because it can work with any formatter plugin
as long as they can agree on a certain set of methods.

JMX also allows to load classes at real time and in
JBoss 3.0 the unified class loader allows to reload
classes (!!) at runtime.

Last but not least it would allow to access components
on another (even remote) JVM without any changes in
the code. For example this would allow to provide a
life preview from plugin-central.

Have fun

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Andreas Schaefer
Senior Consultant
JBoss Group, LLC
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