Simulation and emulation are popular means for evaluating wireless Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) protocols. Since MANETs are highly dependant on their physical environment, these techniques offer only a partial understanding of factors that may influence performance. Deploying real-life MANETs is therefore an indispensable complementary step for the advancement of MANETs. This paper presents FRANC, a dedicated extensible Java framework for the development, deployment and evaluation of applications and algorithms for wireless mobile ad hoc networks.