Organizing plugins, utility classes and jars

Posted by BenTupper on Aug 27, 2009; 12:52am
URL: http://imagej.273.s1.nabble.com/Organizing-plugins-utility-classes-and-jars-tp3691373.html

Hi,

I have been (finally) getting to the point in ImageJ where I have  
collected suites of utility classes and plugins. Suppose that I have  
in the /plugins folder (a) folder of a menu-based plugin plus  
supporting utility classes, (b) a folder of utility classes, (c) a  
folder of a menu-based plugin than wants to use utilities from A and  
B, and (d) a folder called jars.


/plugins
        /pluginA (a plugin plus supporting classes)
                PluginA_.class (the plugin to ImageJ)
                UtilityA1.class
                UtilityA2.class
        /utilityB (utility classes)
                UtilityB1.class
                UtilityB2.class
        /pluginC
                PluginC_.class (wants to use utilities in A and B)
        /jars


My habit at this point is to create jars of the utilities within A and  
B, place them in the /jars folder, and finally remove the original  
code and classes so ImageJ finds only the jars.  Creating the jar in A  
is a little tricky because I don't want to place the menu-based plugin  
"PluginA_.class" in the jar.  It seems a little clunky (and perhaps  
risky) to move the code in and out of the ImageJ/plugins directory.  
It certainly is a pesky process when developing in directory C  
requires modifying the code in A or B.

Is there a conventional way to manage this process that requires less  
effort and risk on my part?

Thanks!
Ben

Ben Tupper