Hi Glenn,
On Jul 1, 2009, at 9:54 PM, <glenn_engel(a)agilent.com> wrote:
  I seem to recall some discussion about automatic
plugin startup
 being planned.  One of the really nice things about confluence is
 that you can add plugins with just a jar file and don't have to
 edit .xml configuration files.   This also makes upgrades of either
 the plugin or wiki easier as everything is in the jar.
 Was anything like this added for 2.0 or possibly planned in the near
 future? 
Yes definitely. This is how it works already. Plugins are the old way
of extending xwiki. The new way is to use components. For example if
you implement a Macro component and put it in WEB-INF/lib it'll be
automatically available.
-Vincent