The Plexus container context allows you to obtain objects from a plexus container to use as your UMO components or to wire other Mule objects such as connectors, transformers, agents, etc.

To use Plexus with Mule you need to set the container context on the Mule manager.

<container-context 
    className="org.mule.extras.plexus.PlexusContainerContext">
    <properties>
        <property name="configFile" value="plexusContext.xml"/>
    </properties>
</container-context>

You can also specify your Plexus configuration inline with the container context i.e.

<container-context 
    className="org.mule.extras.plexus.PlexusContainerContext">
    <plexus>
        <components>
            <component>
                <role>orange</role>
                <implementation>org.mule.tck.testmodels.fruit.Orange</implementation>
            </component>
        </components>
    </plexus>
</container-context>

Now you can load load your UMO components from plexus by specifying the implementation attribute of the the component as the Plexus role name. Using the container context above you can specify a UMOcomponent as -

<mule-descriptor name="orangeUMO" implementation="orange">
    ...
</mule-descriptor>

And you can set Plexus container objects on any other Mule object using the container-property element. See Configuring Properties for more information.