What is New (see all changes)?
- Sep 26 '14 Better support for constructor invocation
Allows the generated constructor to call any constructor, signature is derived from specified static method parameters. See javadoc for @ConstructorDelegate
- Apr 11 '14 Support for binary compatibility patches
Special annotation
@PatchForallows to require that a class should serve as a superclass of some other class. See @PatchFor javadoc for further constraints.To support removing obsolete constructors,
@ConstructorDelegatehas been created to mark moved initialization code. See @ConstructorDelegate javadoc for more details. - Dec 23 '13 JavaFX Library Wrapper
Most of JDK installations come with additional JavaFX JAR. Alas the location of the JAR is different on JDK7 and JDK8, moreover on some operating systems (think of Solaris) the JAR is not present at all. To hide the differences and allow smooth consumption of JavaFX APIs NetBeans provide following conventions.
If you want to code against JavaFX APIs, add dependency on
org.netbeans.libs.javafxlibrary. Then you'll be able to compile and run while using the API.If you want to depend on presence of JavaFX JAR inside of JDK installation structure, use:
OpenIDE-Module-Needs: org.openide.modules.jre.JavaFX
This token is made available by the module system, if the JavaFX module is present in the JDK. Btw. the
org.netbeans.libs.javafxlibrary has such dependency and as a result, all modules that depend on it will be disabled on Solaris or on OpenJDK (if installed without JavaFX). - Feb 12 '13 Find ModuleInfo by code name base easily
New
findCodeNameBase(String)method returning ModuleInfo ornull. - May 24 '12 Less restrictive check of code names of modules and OSGi bundles
Dependency.create now allows code name base where dot is followed by number (like org.apache.servicemix.specs.jsr303_api_1.0.0). This increases the inter-operability with OSGi bundles using such naming style.
Use Cases
For general overview of the concepts,
together with code samples, see chapter 2,
of NetBeans Platform for Beginners
by Jason Wexbridge and Walter Nyland.
Gory technical details are explained on
API overview page
. Other interesting topic(s) follow:
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.Runtime compatibility patches
To maintain binary compatibility, method implementations may be injected at runtime, in a form of a superclass in the class' inheritance hierarchy. Modules compiled against older version of APIs which contains MethodReferences to methods removed from the oficial APIs will be then linked according to JVM Resolution algorithm to a matching method present in the superclass of the referenced type.
Annotations are used to instruct the ClassLoader to make transformations to the API classes. PatchFor causes the annotated class to be injected as a superclass of the API class identified by the annotation's value. ConstructorDelegate marks a method, which is called as constructor implementation in the case that it is necessary to preserve a constructor for binary compatibility.
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
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Group of systemproperty interfaces
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Group of dtd interfaces
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Implementation Details
Read more about the implementation in the answers to architecture questions.