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Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 18:14:03 +0000
From: Rob Walker <robw@ascert.com>
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To: felix-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: using Apache libs in OSGi
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If you haven't already, you might want to try mangen:

http://oscar-osgi.sourceforge.net/mangen/

It was created out of just such a need on our project, and we've used it 
to help with manifest generation of at least 15 third party libs, 
including Apache ones.

The original version was developed as part of the Oscar ObjectWeb 
project - although with Richard's help I did put some OSGi 2.0 and OBR 
2.0 generation code in there. We do plan to move this into Felix at a 
suitable point, and also to include newer OSGi and OBR manifest 
generation support.

Regards

-- Rob Walker

Jeff McAffer wrote:

>This is actually a generic question but since there is so much cool stuff 
>at Apache and this is an Apache OSGi community...
>
>I recently wanted to play with JXpath from Apache Commons.  Of course, I 
>wanted to do this in OSGi so bundles were needed.  Applying all the tools 
>at hand I got the various downloads, generated bundles, discovered what I 
>don't have and applied this recursively until I had acquired several 
>archives, spelunked, extracted bits and pieces and finally come up with 
>something that may actually run.
>
>The point?  This is way too hard and will drive folks away from using OSGi 
>or towards just including all of what they need in their own bundles. 
>Neither option is attractive.
>
>So I am curious if there is much of a movement in Apache to promote the 
>generation/inclusion of OSGi metadata in the output JARs (in particular 
>the Commons stuff).  You can get some of this info by reading the various 
>property files but it is still alot of error prone work.
>
>In addition, many of the downloads I got were distribution zips rather 
>then runnable JARs.  Even if the JARs were in fact bundles, consumers 
>still have to get the zip, dissect and pour over the manifests to ensure 
>they have the right stuff.  Making the actual runnable bundles available 
>directly in Maven, OBR2, ... would make this much easier.  It has the nice 
>effect that it encourages producer communities to look at their dependency 
>structure in a more explicit way and hopefully rationalize it.
>
>Jeff
>
>  
>

-- 


Ascert - Taking systems to the Edge
robw@ascert.com
+44 (0)20 7488 3470
www.ascert.com