[jboss-user] [JBoss OSGi Users] - JBossOSGi vs. Pax-Runner/Pax-Exam

[thomas.diesler@jboss.com]

Kevin sais:

anonymous wrote : 
  | Congrats on the release, I am looking forward to playing with it.
  | 
  | Can you explain the benefits of our own integration over something like the pax-runner/pax-exam framework?  I have been using those for OSGi work and am very happy with it, what functionality do you provide above and beyond theirs?
  | 
  | Do you plan on supporting Knoplerfish? 
  | 

pax-runner/pax-exam is probably not much different to jboss osgi runtime/husky as long as you use the felix or equinox, in an embedded scenario.

The main objective of JBoss OSGi however is to bring OSGi functionality to the JBoss Application server. That JBoss OSGi has its own standalone runtime and can be bootstrapped embedded in you application is a by-product if you like.

With Beta4 you also get the first Alpha release of our own OSGi Framework implementation that is based on the JBoss Microcontainer.

Q: Why would we want to write our own OSGi Framework, if there are good open source alternatives out there? 

A: Because eventually we want to bring added value to our customers that they can leverage the OSGi technology and at the same time talk to existing services that are deployed on JBoss. We would like to access OSGi services from EJB3, MCBeans, MBeans, WebBeans, and vica versa. This type of cross-component model integration would not be possible if we deployed a 3rd party framework like Felix or Equinox into JBoss.

For details on the various runtime model see: http://jbossosgi.blogspot.com/2009/06/jboss-osgi-runtime-as-integration.html

Because JBoss integration is at the heart of everything I do, I needed to find a way to write a plain JUnit4 test case and run that against multiple OSGi Frameworks in embedded mode as well as integrated in JBoss. 

So what I actually do in Hudson is:

#1 build the installer
#2 auto execute the installer with a choice of container/framework
#3 run the test suite against that installation using a given jdk

I that way I can be sure that every functionality I ship and advertise actually runs in JBoss. Pax-Exam does not support the notion of remote OSGi Framework AFAIK.

If you'd like to read more on Husky, have a look at 

http://jbossosgi.blogspot.com/2009/10/osgi-unit-testing.html

Here is the set of requirements that I had

# The solution MUST support plain JUnit4 POJO test cases
# There SHOULD be no requirement to extend a specific test base class
# There MUST be no requirement on a specific test runner
# There SHOULD be a minimum test framework leakage into the test case
# The test framework MUST support embedded and remote OSGi Runtimes with no change required to the test
# The same test case MUST be executable from outside as well as from within the OSGi Framework
# There SHOULD be a pluggable communication layer from the test runner to the OSGi Framework
# The test framework MUST NOT depend on OSGi Framework specific features
# There MUST be no automated creation of test bundles required by the test framework


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