Starting with Geronimo 2.1 the servers are assembled entirely out of plugins.

• Most plugins are Geronimo modules, describing a classloader and services and possibly containing classes and resources.
• Plugins also contain descriptive information and include additional instructions on how the plugin fits into a server.
• Information about multiple plugins can be collected into a plugin catalog, often located in a maven repository
• A plugin repository is basically a plugin catalog together with a maven-structured repository containing plugins.
• Plugins can be installed from a plugin repository into an existing geronimo server using gshell commands or the admin console.
• Plugin metadata for an existing plugin in a geronimo server can be edited (to some extent) in the admin console.
• Maven can be used to assemble a new server out of plugins in a maven repository (not requiring a plugin catalog)
• A new server containing a specified set of plugins can be extracted from an existing server using a gshell command, the admin console, or the Geronimo Eclipse Plugin.
• The dependency system assures that the resulting server has all needed plugins to operate.

This document is organized in the following sections:

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.

Building,installing plugins and extracting a server from an exsiting server

More details about this topic, please see Buidling,installing plugins and assembling a server from an exsiting server

Assembling a server using maven.

The easiest way to assemble a server is to use maven and the car-maven-plugin. The dependencies from your pom will be installed in your server, and if they are plugins they will be installed as modules with all dependencies and stuff unpacked and metadata installed into the correct files. Here's a simple example assembling a server that supports Roller and includes the basic admin console.

Upgrading jars and plugins to a new version