Dynamically loadable and unloadable application modules in Java - how?

Question

I\'m writing a server application which makes use of external modules. I would like to make them to be upgradeable without requiring server restart. How do I do that? I\'ve foun

Answer 1

What you're going for is definitely possible. I believe that you can unload classes from memory by loading them in a separate ClassLoader and then disposing that ClassLoader. If you're not wanting to go all out and use OSGI, I'd recommend something like JBoss Microcontainer (http://www.jboss.org/jbossmc) or ClassWorlds (http://classworlds.codehaus.org/). It's not too terribly difficult to write something like this from scratch if your needs are specialized enough.

Hope this helps, Nate