New "inspect" command (Was: Re: Release of Apache Felix Shell 1.4.0?)

["Richard S. Hall" <he...@ungoverned.org>]

Yes, I think it should be released. However, I am still grappling with 
the one open issue below...I probably should have brought it up on the 
list for input, but I got busy.

I had realized we had commands for inspecting the various types of 
capabilities/requirements present in the OSGi framework (e.g., exports, 
imports, services, etc.). I thought it made sense to create one command 
that does it all in a consistent fashion, so I created the "inspect" 
command. It works like this:

    * inspect (package|bundle|fragment|service) (require|provide) <id> ...

So, if I wanted to check the exported packages of bundle 5 I could type:

    * inspect package provide 5

Or use shorthand like:

    * inspect p p 5

These verbs make pretty good sense for packages and services, but they 
sort of break for require-bundle dependencies. Consider this:

    * inspect bundle provide 5

This would print every bundle that requires 5, for example, and I am not 
sure the verb is intuitive here. For fragments it is potentially worse, 
since fragments are not symmetric (i.e., you cannot both provide a 
fragment and require a fragment)...although if some asks what fragments 
a fragment requires, the answer is just an empty set, so it is still 
do-able.

Part of me thinks I need better verbs than (provide/require), but I 
couldn't really think of any. Another completely different approach is 
to simply have "inspect" dump all capabilities/requirements no matter 
the type (e.g., "inspect 5").

I think it makes sense to combine the various commands into one to avoid 
a proliferation of reflection commands, but I think my current approach 
needs some tweaking.

Any [simple] ideas?

-> richard


On 7/12/09 6:21 PM, Filippo Diotalevi wrote:
> Hi,
>    even if there's a lot going on in the OSGi-shell-space, I think many
> of us are still using the good-old Felix Shell.
> Currently in the trunk there are a number of unreleased fixes/improvement:
>
> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FELIX/fixforversion/12313936
>
> FELIX-1181	 FIXED	 Add support for activation policy in shell "start" command		
> FELIX-1145	 FIXED	 Modify help shell command to avoid issues with long
> command descriptions
> FELIX-1052	 FIXED	 Add log shell command		
> FELIX-1019	 FIXED	 New shell commands "requirers" and "exports" do not
> handle invalid bundle case properly
> FELIX-1058	 FIXED	 [PATCH] Add a "find" command to the shell
>
> while an improvement is still open:
> FELIX-1151	 UNRESOLVED	 Improve naming and consistency of shell
> commands for inspecting dependencies
>
>
> What do you think of releasing Shell 1.4.0?
>
>