IMHO, the basic design and implementation should be XML free and
provide a
straight forward API for assembly, configuration (preferably
atomic) and the
other stuff. Any runtime platform support can be added on top of
that. Look
at Jetty for an example of this approach.
Now, Noel's suggestion for OSGi as the runtime platform is
interesting, if for
no other reason than it allows for hot deploy and reloads. But I
think it
would be possible to provide a BundleActivator and register the
service(s)
even if FtpServer does not require OSGi by definition, if the above
approach
is done well (again Jetty is an example of OSGi bundle on top of
its API).
You're assuming that frameworks other that OSGi cannot do hot deploy,
but yes the general idea is to have something akin to POJOs with no
extends/implements/throws from any framework and optional enablers to
other frameworks in separate classes or module etc.
It has to be said though that OSGi is on a different branch of the
IoC family tree to DI favoring frameworks.
- Paul
