Plugin structure

A plugin is a regular ZIP file using the 1989 PKZip original format, with deflate compression or no compression (beware to produce compatible files), and must have the following structure:

• META-INF/cvplugin.properties - can define several core properties related to the plugin, as key=value lines terminated by a line feed.

  Note:

  Properties can only use ASCII characters, a restriction that Java annotations do not bear for properties such as "Author" or "Copyright". See Description of the META-INF/cvplugin.properties file.

• lib/ - subdirectory contains the plugin JAR file(s). The JAR file(s) will be parsed by the framework to locate all classes, load the required ones, execute initialization steps, etc.

• Other sub-directories can be included to collect additional resources. We strongly recommend not to put any standalone file at the top level of the ZIP directory structure, and collect necessary material in a dedicated sub-folder, such as a resources/ sub-folder.

Component	Description
plugin.jars	A space-separated list of JAR names to be parsed. If defined, the framework will not scan all the jar files present in the lib/ subdirectory, but only scan those defined in this list. Example: plugin.jars=mycomponent.jar
plugin.mainClass	The main plugin class name. If defined, the framework will use the given class name instead of searching for a unique CVPlugin-derived class. Example: plugin.mainClass=com.example.plugins.Plugin
plugin.author	The author name. We recommend using the @CVPluginAuthor() annotation instead.
plugin.copyright	The copyright information. We recommend using the @CVPluginCopyright annotation instead.
plugin.description	The description. We recommend using the @CVPluginDescription annotation instead.
plugin.version	The version information. We recommend using the @CVPluginVersion annotation instead.