osgi and forrest?

[Tim Williams <wi...@gmail.com>]

I'm seeing the Cocoon folks talk about OSGI and now Nicola's notes
mention it in reference to Forrest.  Can someone give a 60-second
version of what OSGI means to Forrest?

btw, the pdf notes are nice.. what was that done with?
--tim

Re: osgi and forrest?

[Nicola Ken Barozzi <ni...@apache.org>]

Tim Williams wrote:
> I'm seeing the Cocoon folks talk about OSGI

Actually Cocoon trunk now runs on OSGI.

> and now Nicola's notes
> mention it in reference to Forrest.  Can someone give a 60-second
> version of what OSGI means to Forrest?

It means that every plugin will be an OSGI component that adheres to a
Cocoon block interface and to the Forrest plugin interface.

Blocks are components that specify version and dependencies, can be
hot-deployed-started-stopped, and expose java service interfaces, and
resources.

Cocoon blocks are OSGI components with extra metadata, that can also
expose sitemap resources and components. They will be managed by the
Cocoon core block.

Forrest plugins will be Cocoon blocks with extra information about our
plugin "contracts". They will be managed by the Forrest core block.

IOW imagine that you can add plugins to a live running forrest and
dependencies are automatically resolved and the blocks coexist with
separate classloading.

Here is an old mail that explains the usecase:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&m=102941595120561&w=2
  or
http://wiki.apache.org/cocoon/BlocksUseCases?highlight=%28BLOCKS%29

Here is the live Blockathon report:
http://wiki.apache.org/cocoon/Blockathon2005Report

> btw, the pdf notes are nice.. what was that done with?

M$ Journal on my HP-Compaq 2100 Tablet PC, exported to TIFF and printed
to PDF using PDFCreator.

:-D

-- 
Nicola Ken Barozzi                   nicolaken@apache.org
            - verba volant, scripta manent -
   (discussions get forgotten, just code remains)
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