How to deploy OSGi apps and dependencies?

Question

OSGi seems to have an excellent benefit of having small deployable artifacts by not wrapping dozens of JAR dependencies into a lib directory. However, I can\'t find anything tha

Answer 1

There are a number of ways to deploy dependent bundles to OSGi containers. Here are some of them:

1 The Felix OBR bundle repository

You first need to create an XML index file for your available bundles, using a tool such as bindex. If you are using the maven-bundle-plugin, then it automatically maintains an OBR index in ~/.m2/repository/repository.xml.

Load the index using the OBR command-line interface:

> obr:addUrl file:/Users/derek/.m2/repository/repository.xml

Then ask OBR to deploy your target bundle, with dependencies determined from the OBR index:

> obr:deploy com.paremus.posh.sshd
Target resource(s):
-------------------
   Paremus Posh Ssh Daemon (1.0.23.SNAPSHOT)

Required resource(s):
---------------------
   Paremus Command API (1.0.23.SNAPSHOT)

Optional resource(s):
---------------------
   Paremus Config Admin Commands (1.0.23.SNAPSHOT)
   Paremus OSGi & LDAP Types (1.0.23.SNAPSHOT)

2 Apache Karaf

Karaf supports "features", which are basically lists of bundles required to provide the feature:

karaf@root> features:info obr
Description of obr 2.0.0 feature
----------------------------------------------------------------
Feature has no configuration
Feature has no dependencies.
Feature contains followed bundles:
  mvn:org.apache.felix/org.apache.felix.bundlerepository/1.6.4
  mvn:org.apache.karaf.shell/org.apache.karaf.shell.obr/2.0.0
  mvn:org.apache.karaf.features/org.apache.karaf.features.obr/2.0.0

karaf@root> features:install obr

3 Eclipse Virgo

Virgo uses plans to define the artifacts that comprise an application and it is able to automatically supply the dependencies of an application including bundles, plans, plan archives (PARs), and configurations, from both local and remote repositories.

4 Paremus Nimble

Nimble uses OBR (or its own extended) repository indexes, to automatically deploy all dependent bundles needed to activate a target bundle (and uninstalls them when the target bundle is stopped). It can also detect other dependencies, such as a WAB bundle requires a web-extender and automatically install one according to a configurable policy.

Nimble can also be configured to launch Glassfish, so that its features are available to bundles in the Glassfish container.

The example below also shows that logging support is automatically installed when sshd is activated:

$ posh
________________________________________
Welcome to Paremus Nimble!
Type 'help' for help.
[denzil.0]% nim:add --dry-run com.paremus.posh.sshd@active
-- sorted parts to install --
4325   osgi.resolved.bundle/ch.qos.logback.core:0.9.22
-- start dependency loop --
5729   osgi.resolved.bundle/com.paremus.util.logman:1.0.23.SNAPSHOT
5727   osgi.active.bundle/com.paremus.util.logman:1.0.23.SNAPSHOT
3797   osgi.resolved.bundle/ch.qos.logback.classic:0.9.25.SNAPSHOT
3792   osgi.resolved.bundle/slf4j.api:1.6
-- end dependency loop --
436   osgi.resolved.bundle/org.apache.mina.core:2.0.0.RC1
6533   osgi.resolved.bundle/sshd-core:0.3
398   osgi.resolved.bundle/com.paremus.posh.sshd:1.0.23.SNAPSHOT
396   osgi.active.bundle/com.paremus.posh.sshd:1.0.23.SNAPSHOT

(disclaimer: I'm a developer at Paremus)

5 Apache Felix Gogo

gogo is the new RFC147 standard command-line shell. It is already used in Felix, Karaf, Nimble and will soon be available in Glassfish.

Gogo allows you to run any commands that you could type interactively, as a script. So you could generate the list of bundles to install and convert it to a script, or even capture the installed bundles from a working configuration so that it can be re-created from a clean start.