OSGi usage. was: Re: AW: Tuscany users, we want your feedback on the Tuscany distribution

[Raymond Feng <en...@gmail.com>]

Hi, Daniel.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I'm particularly interested 
in the OSGi enablement for Tuscany modules. I have started to work in this 
area recently and would like to bring our OSGi enablement to the 
"mainstream". Any help is welcome.

I have a few comments and further questions for you:

1)  > Embedded in Equinox OSGi runtime.

Do you start the Equinox alone outside Eclipse or do you use Tuscany bundles 
for your Eclipse plugins inside Eclipse? For example, copy the tuscany 
bundles into eclipse/plugins folder and reference them in your own plugins?

2) > + OSGi bundling
>    * Lots of problems integrating the Tuscany OSGi dependency bundles
> with our own dependency bundles, especially related to XML processing
> bundles (JAXP, JAXB).

Can you provide us a few examples on the issues you run into?

>    * Distribution as OSGi bundles should be available and tested. All
> features working in standalone mode should work in OSGi, too.

+1.

>    * 3rd party libs should be available as separate bundles, not one
> big bundle

+1.

>    * Equinox should be a supported OSGi platform (it's OK by now. It
> didn't work completely when we started).

+1. I started to improve the Equinox support too.

>    * Exporting / Importing should use version numbers

+1.

>    * only interfaces should be exported (access only allowed to the
> "API") and not inner implementations and 3rd party related stuff

+1. To formalize and enforce the SPI contracts between modules is the first 
objective we try to achieve for the Tuscany OSGi enablement effort.

>    * "Dynamic Imports" in bundles should be avoided. We had lots of
> classloading problems

+1. Which bundle do you see the "DynamicImport-Package" directive?

Thanks,
Raymond
--------------------------------------------------
From: <Da...@empolis.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 6:07 AM
To: <us...@tuscany.apache.org>; <an...@apache.org>
Subject: AW: Tuscany users, we want your feedback on the Tuscany 
distribution

> Hello Tuscany Team,
>
> here is the requested feedback from the SMILA development team:
>
>
> - Do you use and are happy with the current distributions?
>
> No, we do not use it currently, because we didn't manage to integrate
> everything cleanly. It would be great if a distribution based on OSGi
> bundles would be available, too.
>
>
> - Do you use the binary distribution or build your own out of individual
> jars?
>
> We build our own, because we used itest/osgi-tuscany to create OSGi
> bundles. We also applied and tested some smaller bug fixes before
> contributing them.
>
>
> - Do you run Tuscany standalone, or use it in webapps, or embed it in
> other runtimes?
>
> Embedded in Equinox OSGi runtime.
>
>
> - Do you find it easy or hard to upgrade to new Tuscany releases?
>
> We didn't try yet.
>
>
> - Is it a problem working out what Tuscany jars and dependency jars are
> needed?
>
> Yes. A documentation would be nice stating
>    + which modules of Tuscany are essential
>    + which modules are optional and can be removed when a feature is
> not needed
>    + which 3rd-party dependencies are required by which module
>
>
> - Anything else which you find good or bad about the current structure?
>
> + OSGi bundling
>    * Lots of problems integrating the Tuscany OSGi dependency bundles
> with our own dependency bundles, especially related to XML processing
> bundles (JAXP, JAXB).
>    * Distribution as OSGi bundles should be available and tested. All
> features working in standalone mode should work in OSGi, too.
>    * 3rd party libs should be available as separate bundles, not one
> big bundle
>    * Equinox should be a supported OSGi platform (it's OK by now. It
> didn't work completely when we started).
>    * Exporting / Importing should use version numbers
>    * only interfaces should be exported (access only allowed to the
> "API") and not inner implementations and 3rd party related stuff
>    * "Dynamic Imports" in bundles should be avoided. We had lots of
> classloading problems
>
> + Documentation/Samples
>    * There are several possibilities to start a SCA runtime.
> Documentation/samples about what approach to use when and how would be
> helpful (e.g. contributions)
>    * Much more documentation and samples about deployment models of
> Tuscany is needed (domain-node-cloud-workspace model)
>
>
>
> Finally we want to say that besides the issues mentioned we really like
> the Tuscany project and are eager to use Tuscany in the eclipse SMILA
> project.
> The Tuscany project team was always very helpful and gave us great
> support at high speed response time. Thank you for your great work!
>
>
> With best regards,
> the SMILA Team
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> Von: ant elder [mailto:ant.elder@gmail.com]
> Gesendet: Freitag, 11. Juli 2008 11:08
> An: user@tuscany.apache.org
> Betreff: Tuscany users, we want your feedback on the Tuscany
> distribution
>
>
> Over on the dev list we've been having lots of discussion around
> changing the Tuscany distribution to be better and more usable. To aid
> this something which would be really useful would be feedback from
> users. What you think of the current distribution, how do you use
> Tuscany and is there anything you can suggest that might making things
> better or easier for you?  So please if you've some time reply with
> comments:
>
> - Do you use and are happy with the current distributions?
> - Do you use the binary distribution or build your own out of
> individual jars?
> - Do you run Tuscany standalone, or use it it webapps, or embed
> it in other runtimes?
> - Do you find it easy or hard to upgrade to new Tuscany
> releases?
> - Is it a problem working out what Tuscany jars and dependency
> jars are needed?
> - Anything else which you find good or bad about the current
> structure?
>
> This is your chance to help shape future Tuscany releases, any
> and all comments would be really welcome!
>
>    ...ant
>
>
>
>
>
> 

AW: OSGi usage. was: Re: AW: Tuscany users, we want your feedback on the Tuscany distribution

[Da...@empolis.com]

Hi Raymond,

sorry for the late reply, I was on vacation.
Please check the answers inline.

Bye,
Daniel


> Hi, Daniel.
> 
> Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I'm particularly
> interested
> in the OSGi enablement for Tuscany modules. I have started to work in
> this
> area recently and would like to bring our OSGi enablement to the
> "mainstream". Any help is welcome.
> 
> I have a few comments and further questions for you:
> 
> 1)  > Embedded in Equinox OSGi runtime.
> 
> Do you start the Equinox alone outside Eclipse or do you use Tuscany
> bundles
> for your Eclipse plugins inside Eclipse? For example, copy the tuscany
> bundles into eclipse/plugins folder and reference them in your own
> plugins?

The goal is to have a self-contained server application, so we start
Equinox runtime outside of eclipse.

 
> 2) > + OSGi bundling
> >    * Lots of problems integrating the Tuscany OSGi dependency
bundles
> > with our own dependency bundles, especially related to XML
processing
> > bundles (JAXP, JAXB).
> 
> Can you provide us a few examples on the issues you run into?

In general there were classloading problems like xerces/xalan
META-INF/services descriptions were not found or the classes therein
were not found). Here are 2 links with discussions, they should contain
some more details about various issues.
- http://www.mail-archive.com/tuscany-user@ws.apache.org/msg02594.html
- http://www.mail-archive.com/tuscany-user@ws.apache.org/msg03165.html
All those problems forced us to postpone Tuscany integration in SMILA
(formerly EILF). I will give it another try soon and will provide
detailed information about such problems as they occur.



> >    * "Dynamic Imports" in bundles should be avoided. We had lots of
> > classloading problems
> 
> +1. Which bundle do you see the "DynamicImport-Package" directive?


I guess in former versions "dynamic imports" were used more frequently.
I did a search on the latest version and found only one Manifest.mf in
sca\itest\osgi-tuscany\osgi-tuscany-test\src\test\resources\META-INF
that use it.