What is the difference between module, plugin and component in Java?

Question

What is the difference between module, plugin and component in Java?

Answer 1

In plain Java, your organizational units are just packages and classes.

Some frameworks allow you to define these higher level organizational units in terms of those above, and can manage their lifecycle.

• A module a quite generic terminology for a related set of classes that perform a task, and are usually bundled together in a jar file.
• A plugin is, like its name says, a piece of software that you can plug into an application to provide new functionality. Plugins usually implement well defined API's and are reactive (that is, they provide services that the main application can use).
• A component is any piece of software designed to be reusable.

So you can have modules that contain plugins and components, components that are plugins, etc.