CODEWITHSUNDEEP
eclipsemaven-2compilationosgibundle
nosferat
nosferat

Reputation: 931

Compiling and running an OSGI application in Eclipse

The base of our enterprise application is OSGI and we have several Java projects that are logically OSGI bundles. We use Maven to compile the application using the Maven Bundle plugin. But this process is time consuming and makes it impossible to debug the application. We also use the Runner and Pax(:provison) plugins to run the application. If we could rely on the Auto build function of Eclipse and also debug the application it would make our lives so much easier. Is there a way to configure Eclipse to be able to compile (and may be run) an OSGI-based application?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 1079

Answers (4)

Peter Kriens
Peter Kriens

Reputation: 15372

Look at bndtools. bndtools is using the same bnd that is underlying the maven bundle plugin. You can even use bndtools together with m2e. bndtools is available from the Eclipse market place.

Upvotes: 1

Holly Cummins
Holly Cummins

Reputation: 11502

If you're already using the maven bundle plugin, you may find that PDE's manifest-first approach isn't a good fit with your existing code-first build (I assume at the end you want both an IDE build for development and debugging, and a command-line build for continuous integration and automated testing).

You have two choices. As others have suggested, you can use Eclipse's integrated PDE, and use Tycho for your maven build. Tycho uses the same data used by PDE, so you don't have to write things down more than once. Alternatively, you can stick with the maven bundle plugin and use bndtools within Eclipse. Like the bundle plugin, bndtools is code-first, so you won't need to worry about maintaining manifests. However, you may find there isn't quite as big a set of features in bndtools as in PDE, and I'd suggest still checking your manifests by hand to make sure you understand what's being generated. Whether you prefer manifest-first or code-first is a bit of a heated philosophical debate.

Upvotes: 1

Frank Lee
Frank Lee

Reputation: 2748

I'm not entirely sure if I understand you, but here goes.

Well, running/debugging OSGi applications in Eclipse is really easy, as long as your bundles reside in PDE aware projects or at least are on your target platform.

Do you have the source of all your bundles? Debugging without source isn't all that useful. If you do, can you just import all the source of your bundles into your Eclipse workspace?

Otherwise you can create a target platform, add all your bundles to that. (as a first attempt, I'd say dump all your bundles in a directory and point the target platform there)

Either way, then you should be able to Run (or debug)-> OSGi framework -> New -> Pick your bundles -> Start

You can both pick bundles from or target platform and from your workspace.

Upvotes: 5

Konstantin Komissarchik
Konstantin Komissarchik

Reputation: 29139

For building, you can use Eclipse Plugin Development Environment (PDE). Despite its name, it isn't specific to building Eclipse plugins and can be used for working on pure OSGi bundles. Eclipse plugins are OSGi bundles with some extras.

Cannot help you with the running or debugging part, although I do know that some enterprise-oriented OSGi platforms provide extensions to PDE.

Upvotes: 3

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