During initial discussions about ORM in OSGi [1], we had targeted OSGi 4.2. However, in
order to completely handle bundle scanning [2], we need an API that was not introduced
until OSGi 4.3 (BundleWiring). There's nothing like it in 4.2 and it's not
easily/reliably replaced. Although I believe 4.2 is still used in the community, most
containers/runtimes (including JBoss OSGi) now support 4.3 and (very soon) 5.0.
We're obviously not interested in branching hibernate-osgi to support multiple OSGi
versions. Although 4.2 is still used, should we require 4.3? Without the ability to
exhaustively and reliably scan the bundles for resources, our capabilities are limited
anyway. Further, if a user still requires 4.2, they can always wrap Hibernate as an OSGi
bundle in any of the legacy methods.
[1]
https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HHH-7527
[2]
https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HHH-7993
Brett Meyer
Red Hat Software Engineer, Hibernate