Hi Thomas,
Thanks for trying :-) Comments in line...
Paul
On Oct 16, 2012, at 9:14 , Thomas Frühbeck <fruehbeck(a)aon.at> wrote:
Hello Paul, Lincoln,
since the discussion started about moving to OSGi I have been reading, investigating and
experimenting a bit and want to share my experiences as a novice - are you smiling
already?
I started with the current working Forge set of jars and tried to throw it at Felix -
hindlooking somewhat naive I admit. Then the adventure started :-)
* the BndTools 2.0.0 alpha command line "wrap" generated the new Manifest
internally, but didn't write it into the jar in the end
- after some frustrating experiments and reading of the documentation (dating
2006?!?) ~20 times I debugged and fixed the problem
- comment by Peter Kriens: command line "wrap" is "for quick use,
for serious use, always make a bnd file that controls the process" - which
practically means: best write the Manifest yourself, honestly I can't see so much
difference between calling "jar ufm <jar> <manifest.part>" and
"bnd <bndfile> -o <jar> <jar>"
Use BndTools instead. There is a wizard "Wrap JAR as OSGi bundle"
* the structure of Bnd-projects is totally different to maven
projects - I tried to setup the bnd source whithout Bnd-Tools, this is _no_ fun
- after ~15 years of programming thats now the 15th version of project structure
- not again please?!
Don't try playing with bndtools projects without bndtools. That's like playing
with Maven projects without Maven ;-)
BndTools projects are structured as standard Eclipse projects, only the dependency
management is done by BndTools (and that's why you should not try to work around
that).
* the current state of jars in maven repositories out there makes integration into
OSGi a nightmare!!
- wrong manifests
- manifests full of hundreds of Attributes - totally useless
- manifests importing dependencies without declaring them "optional" -
please investigate each and every dependency yourself and rewite them
- manifests declaring dependencies with version restriction which is not provided
by the targeted bundle
- what a mess :-/
- IMHO in essence the current state makes the OSGi-landscape an island
Depending on what you are trying to use this can be the case unfortunately. It's
getting better though, more and more libraries come with correct manifests. It's
mostly a problem with frameworks (as opposed to libraries). The up-side is that plugin
developers will hardly ever introduce frameworks in their plugins, because Forge already
offers an easy programming model.
* after reading the IMHO excellent book "OSGi in Action" @Manning I
understand, that the resulting class loading inside the framework is far from easy to
understand, if you go only one level deeper into the real mechanics - it's still no
magic going on there
Isolated classloading is a complicated topic in any modular approach, as an application
developer you hardly ever have to deal with that level however.
* it's all about control - yes, sure, I understand that - but in the end we have
to hide the complexity completely! After so many years of struggle I do not expect all
Java programmers to gladly jump on the OSGi bandwaggon just because of the advent of Forge
2.0
I am completely convinced, that OSGi is the best currently available instantiation of a
framework we want in a tool like Forge, but the current situation makes the move
substantial and painful - compared to the current easy going programming model.
The currently programming model is easy because (mostly Lincoln) did all kind of CDI magic
to create this programming model. Out of the box it's really not that easy when
looking at just the low-level building blocks. It's the same when we build on OSGI, we
have to provide the easy programming model. I strongly believe that it will be as easy as
it is now.
So I also want to stress the necessity of a "Manifest" for the "Forge goes
OSGi" project - if there is one:
- try hard to stick to maven as build environment. Reasons: user base, documentation,
stability, versatility
You are right about the user base, but for the rest it's really very similar.
- CDI is IMHO the new common understanding, stick to it please.
No OSGi on the surface.
- define precisely the core / plugin bundle interaction
- e.g. from the view point of the "user" we could
- present a version of core internally for each major version of dependent
plugins to enable her to use old and new plugins side-by-side
- present a dialog: "which version of core do you want to start" to
enable use of new and old plugins
- tell her that she has lots of plugins, but due to the version of core none
of them are usable
- due to the nature of OSGi I am convinced, that a great deal of thought should
be invested in the _vision_ we have of Forge before starting the hacking sessions -
especially regarding the current state of it: versatile, flexible, open, based on sound
tooling,..
Sorry if that was not very productive, after 3 weeks of struggling just had to write that
down :-)
Are you experts smiling? At least I hope you do!
Thanks for your time, commitment and the incredible Forge!
Forge on,
Thomas
Am 15.10.2012 23:55, schrieb Paul Bakker:
> First of all I don't think it should be a requirement, you can get a very similar
programming model doing pure OSGi. The alternative I use most is Felix DM:
http://felix.apache.org/site/apache-felix-dependency-manager-getting-star....
> You can either use a Java API or annotations (probably we should use annotations). It
can do pretty much everything CDI can, but based on OSGi services.
>
> I'm obviously not against CDI at all, I'm a big fan of it, just think we
should be careful using a framework that will most probably change significantly in the
next few months. But before making that choice, maybe we should include Mathieu and David
in this discussion.
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
> On Oct 15, 2012, at 23:47 , "Lincoln Baxter, III"
<lincolnbaxter(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Since CDI annotations is a requirement, isn't this something we will need?
What do you recommend as an alternative? What is it missing that would be a blocker?
>>
>> Sorry for all the tough questions :) Thanks for your time!!!
>>
>> ~Lincoln
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 5:40 PM, Paul Bakker <paul.bakker.nl(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>> It provides several things:
>> -Publish OSGi services using CDI annotations
>> -Inject OSGi services in CDI beans using @Inject
>> -Inject OSGi APIs such as the bundlecontext using @Inject
>>
_______________________________________________
forge-dev mailing list
forge-dev(a)lists.jboss.org
https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/forge-dev