3rd Party Library Wrapper Module Repository

[Florian Brunner]

Hi,

several people are struggling to integrate 3rd party libraries to their
NetBeans Platform based application. It's sometimes not that obvious,
which jars to include in the Library Wrapper Modules and how to set the
dependencies. Eg. I've read (and experienced with some of them myself)
that people struggle to integrate: Java DB, TopLink, Hibernate,
GlassFish client libraries.
But there are also many other useful Java library projects on the web,
which don't provide their libraries as NetBeans Modules.

Therefore I suggest that we start a repository, where we host 3rd Party
Library Wrapper Modules and make them available to NetBeans Platform
developers via the Update Center.
As a sample we could have a look at PackMan:
http://packman.links2linux.de/

They provide 3rd party packages for different Linux systems (mainly
different versions of SuSE).

The repository should support:
- categories
- different versions of the NetBeans Platform (needed ?)
- different versions of the 3rd party library
- the library binaries as Library Wrapper Modules
- the libraries' sources as NetBeans Modules (adding library entries)
- the libraries' Javadoc as NetBeans Modules (adding library entries)

What do you think?

Do you think this should be part of the Plugin Portal or seperate? I
think pure Library Wrapper Modules used for NetBeans Platform based
development only, should be in a own repository. Who could host it and
set it up? It would be great if it could be part of the NetBeans website
itself. Maybe parts of the PluginPortal could be reused?

-Florian