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Posted to dev@felix.apache.org by Enrique Rodriguez <en...@gmail.com> on 2006/05/30 13:53:02 UTC

[ANN] "Felix Commons" Initiative

Hi, Felix developers,

As OSGi developers, many of us are faced with the need to "bundlize" 
library jars; that is, to maintain 3rd party libraries re-packaged as 
OSGi bundles.  Maintaining these jars results in a duplication of effort 
and it doesn't address the fact that many of us would like to see 3rd 
party library projects directly produce OSGi bundles.  Therefore, we'd 
like to start an initiative at Felix to provide a "commons" for 
bundlized jars.

"Felix Commons" (for lack of a better name) would be a place were we can
work to demonstrate best practices and common conventions for the 
manifest headers required by OSGi.  In many cases, we will be able to 
use the Felix M2 Plugin to maintain thin M2 modules with nothing more 
than pom.xml's.  By incorporating feedback into the Felix M2 Plugin, we 
can codify these best practices and ensure that bundle manifests are 
produced consistently.

Of course, we encourage other projects to directly maintain OSGi bundle
jars, but, in the meantime, we can demonstrate how easy and non-invasive 
the maintenance of bundle manifest headers is.  As OSGi continues to 
gain adoption, our bundlized jars will serve as examples that other 
teams can review and learn from.

Initially, I'd like to seed this with jars I've found useful.  I am sure 
that many of the Commons libraries will be useful, as well as artifacts 
of larger projects such as Lucene, Xerces, Jasper, and Tomcat.  I hope 
you'll take a look at the bundlized jars you are currently maintaining 
and help us get this initiative underway at Apache Felix.

Enrique


Re: [ANN] "Felix Commons" Initiative

Posted by "Richard S. Hall" <he...@ungoverned.org>.
Torsten Curdt wrote:
> Sure ...all I am saying is: it would be good to drop them a mail.
> Maybe they have some ideas how to handle this best, too.

Sure thing.

-> richard

Re: [ANN] "Felix Commons" Initiative

Posted by Torsten Curdt <tc...@apache.org>.
> One of my original ideas was to simply copy a maven repository and run
> mangen over it to generate the manifest headers all at once (with some
> simplifying assumptions, such as exporting all packages).
>
> Another possibility is to figure out how to get our OSGi plugin
> capabilities built into the standard Maven JAR creation mechanism.
> However, I think we are still working the bugs out of the plugin yet, so
> this is not quite possible yet.
>
> Thus, the commons proposal seems like a reasonable interim solution so
> we can stop a lot of duplication of effort and just get the ball rolling
> in general.

Sure ...all I am saying is: it would be good to drop them a mail.
Maybe they have some ideas how to handle this best, too.

cheers
--
Torsten

Re: [ANN] "Felix Commons" Initiative

Posted by "Richard S. Hall" <he...@ungoverned.org>.
Torsten Curdt wrote:
> The idea is good ...but wouldn't it be good to check with the maven
> community and work something out with them ...together?
>
> Just a thought....

One of my original ideas was to simply copy a maven repository and run 
mangen over it to generate the manifest headers all at once (with some 
simplifying assumptions, such as exporting all packages).

Another possibility is to figure out how to get our OSGi plugin 
capabilities built into the standard Maven JAR creation mechanism. 
However, I think we are still working the bugs out of the plugin yet, so 
this is not quite possible yet.

Thus, the commons proposal seems like a reasonable interim solution so 
we can stop a lot of duplication of effort and just get the ball rolling 
in general.

-> richard

RE: [ANN] "Felix Commons" Initiative

Posted by "Noel J. Bergman" <no...@devtech.com>.
> The idea is good ...but wouldn't it be good to check with the maven
> community and work something out with them ...together?

And Ant.

	--- Noel

Re: [ANN] "Felix Commons" Initiative

Posted by Torsten Curdt <tc...@apache.org>.
The idea is good ...but wouldn't it be good to check with the maven
community and work something out with them ...together?

Just a thought....

cheers
--
Torsten

Re: [ANN] "Felix Commons" Initiative

Posted by Trustin Lee <tr...@gmail.com>.
On 5/30/06, Richard S. Hall <he...@ungoverned.org> wrote:
>
> I support this idea.


A big +1 here, too! :)

Trustin
-- 
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Re: [ANN] "Felix Commons" Initiative

Posted by "Richard S. Hall" <he...@ungoverned.org>.
I support this idea.

-> richard

Enrique Rodriguez wrote:
> Hi, Felix developers,
>
> As OSGi developers, many of us are faced with the need to "bundlize" 
> library jars; that is, to maintain 3rd party libraries re-packaged as 
> OSGi bundles.  Maintaining these jars results in a duplication of 
> effort and it doesn't address the fact that many of us would like to 
> see 3rd party library projects directly produce OSGi bundles.  
> Therefore, we'd like to start an initiative at Felix to provide a 
> "commons" for bundlized jars.
>
> "Felix Commons" (for lack of a better name) would be a place were we can
> work to demonstrate best practices and common conventions for the 
> manifest headers required by OSGi.  In many cases, we will be able to 
> use the Felix M2 Plugin to maintain thin M2 modules with nothing more 
> than pom.xml's.  By incorporating feedback into the Felix M2 Plugin, 
> we can codify these best practices and ensure that bundle manifests 
> are produced consistently.
>
> Of course, we encourage other projects to directly maintain OSGi bundle
> jars, but, in the meantime, we can demonstrate how easy and 
> non-invasive the maintenance of bundle manifest headers is.  As OSGi 
> continues to gain adoption, our bundlized jars will serve as examples 
> that other teams can review and learn from.
>
> Initially, I'd like to seed this with jars I've found useful.  I am 
> sure that many of the Commons libraries will be useful, as well as 
> artifacts of larger projects such as Lucene, Xerces, Jasper, and 
> Tomcat.  I hope you'll take a look at the bundlized jars you are 
> currently maintaining and help us get this initiative underway at 
> Apache Felix.
>
> Enrique
>
>