About the System Filesystem

See Also

The system filesystem is the general registry for publicly accessible data and objects. It is a virtual filesystem that contains configuration information. NetBeans stores a wide variety of configuration information in the system filesystem. For example, the system filesystem contains a folder called Menu, which contains subfolders with names such as "File" and "Edit". These subfolders contain files that represent Java classes which implement the actions that appear in the "File" and "Edit" menus.

When you create a module, you are free to create your own folders in the system filesystem to store data that relate to your module. You can also add objects to existing folders. One of the reasons to use the system filesystem is that it allows objects to be declared, but their classes not actually loaded by the JVM until something needs to use them, thus saving memory.

One important aspect of a NetBeans virtual filesystem is that it can fire events to notify the rest of the system when something in it changes. NetBeans listens for changes in the system filesystem, and if, for example, something creates a new object in one of the menu folders, that new item will appear in the menu.

See Also
About the NetBeans Platform
About the NetBeans APIs
About NetBeans Platform and Module Development
About XML Layer Files
Working with Modules
Module Tasks: Quick Reference

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