.far stands for Form Archive and these are the form deployment unit files we use in HIS

Attached is a sample form deployment file with a simple. To deploy it, you first need to configure the form deployment directory in the his.properties files. Once the system starts all *.far files in this directory will be loaded in the system and deployed. You can also drop more *.far files in this directory and hot-deploy them while the system is running.

Currently there's a bug that prevents the un/re-deployment of the forms in Windows OS. This is due to file handles issues. None the less it works under Linux and thus I expect it to work under Mac too (but we need to check it to be sure).

Currently this deployment mechanism is home grown, in future phases it would probably be wise to use OSGi for this.