geWorkbench

== Overview ==

.GEAR files are essentially zipped versions of geWorkBench visual plugins. They make it easy to distribute reasonably sized upgrades to specific parts of the application.

== Creating a .GEAR file ==

There is an ant task that will create a .GEAR file automatically. Run ant with “ant –Dcomponent=NAME” which will create a .gear file from the specified component directory. You can also run the Windows batch file “makeGear NAME” instead. Put the resulting .gear file in the components directory of a geWorkbench installation and it will be loaded by the application.

== Viewing loaded versions of components ==

The version menu item, under help will list all the loaded versions of plugins, and will indicate which ones are loading from .GEAR files, an example is below.

[[Image:VersionDialog.png||Example version screen.]]