Vote for Java6 on OSX

Since late 2005 i am deveoping all open source stuff on my powerbook. (yes, that has to be replaced by a more recent maching like MBP C2D 2,4GHz very soon.. still gathering money).

Actually OSX is a very nice envinronment to work in. And it is quite well developing java in.
But Apple still haven't got released a Java6 SDK/JRE.
Even worse, there isn't much information about any (if any) timeschedule available.

Because of that this guys launched a vote on it.
I want a Java6 on my mac really soon, so no brainer i vote for it!

13949712720901ForOSX

Thats it.

Link: OSGi on Google's Android

This is just a quick referal to the fact that Felix has been successfully installed (and started) on Google's new operating system for mobile phones!

The guy behind is Karl Pauls of Luminis who is Apache Felix committer.
According to this blog entry only small change to the felix framework was necessary and chances are good that it will be integrated into standard apache felix.

Another comment at the blog was including felix into standard android.. so that's the way to go, google! ;-)
Good Job, Karl!

Toni

251.787.0

There are some projects running which now got an overal direction.
The projects are as of today:

• okidoki: a pretty unique integrated build system for osgi bundles.
  
• viscera: introducing your java as semantic web
  
• osgify.com: use osgi structures without hassle.
  

They are in active development since summer '07. Some of them are currently in private beta. Some but not all are osgi related.

Nevertheless they all make up a very unique development stack never touched before.
Once it's time, i will show information and release all projects for further development at ops4j.org.

The overall identifier for all efforts mentioned above is
Its not more than a pretty scary number.. but its a title which won't interfer with other projects.
Details on each of the projects as well as official announcements and public code release will show up here occasionally.

So long, happy coding,
Toni

Installing Jetty on Ubuntu - or

This one from http://dannyayers.com/2007/11/16/installing-jetty-on
is pretty funny in a subtle way:
Its an article entitled: Installing Jetty on Ubuntu Gutsy

added multiverse to /etc/apt/sources.list

apt-get install sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-jre

apt-get install jetty

cd /usr/share/jetty/lib
java -jar start.jar /etc/jetty/jetty.xml

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/commons/logging/LogFactory
...

apt-get remove jetty
apt-get autoremove

apt-get install tomcat5.5 tomcat5.5-admin tomcat5.5-webapps

* Starting Tomcat servlet engine tomcat5.5 [ OK ]

wget http://localhost:8180/
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK

Not sure if the original author thought about it this way but thats a pretty nice
analogy to common behaviour in IT - enterprise projects today.

Its pragmatic behaviour extended to a level where things are on the way getting worse!
Of cause i am not talking about technologies mentioned in this quote. Those can be exchanged anyway.

Hate Maven2 or how evil can it be?

[DISCLAIMER: this article contains some rude language sections]

Just want to express my growing hate about maven2 and its uncertainty..

Howard Lewis Ship brings it to a point:

"when Maven is useful it is very useful, but when it gets in your way, it totally blocks you"

Maven is a tool which you really don't if you actually love it (sometimes even i do, especially if you working on open source projects and you want to test/patch things) or hate.

The last point this week that makes me writing this article is the javax.jta shit.. well thats so stupid.
This javax.jta is protected by some SUN (look at "JAVA" in your stock chart btw) licence and you have to install this module yourself.. well.. we are in 2007 not in 1997.. wake up!!

Why don't they (maven) just build in a license policy in their reactor so people can decide and agree on licencing-terms themselves the first time they access a protected resource?
Don't want to mix concerns but the OSGi Bundle Repository effort (RFC-112) supports this kind of licencing as a build-in-step.

Sure this one is pretty old but it stopped me for about a day or so because i really believed it was me doing something wrong.. but actually you just HAVE TO install this crappy api (sorry for terminology) yourself.
And Maven2 does not tell about why artifacts are not do not exist. They just tell you that you should install it yourself. But this is the case if you mispelled something in one of your pom.xml, configuration.xml, server.xml or your local repository or somewhere.. maybe you have just a bad day and this kind of things just work the next day.. the thing is:
YOU NEVER KNOW
Not sure how much money you can waste with another build-tool (ant,rake,make or whatever) but i know that maven2 can really kick you in your ass..

Next time i'll write in a less hot many - hopefully.

JavaBlackbelt.com: i got the yellow one

After my past carrier as judoka (stopped in 2002) i found myself fighting for gold again..
okay not medals but belts which are the graduation symbols for Judo and for exams on the JavaBlackbelt.com website.
After just two exams called "OO for Java - Basic" and "Java SE - basic" i graduated to the yellow belt stage. Sure not rocket science but educational fun on a sunday.. well..

Software is (often) written by humans

As i mentioned yesterday i am currently reading the book "Java - Concurrency in practice".
Well, i am just on page 100 so this blog whill not review the book yet.
But i just encountered a small section that is about reasoning of concurrency practice in 3rd party code. The author nicely calls for better documentation (of cause, we all do a lot!..) of the implemented policy (implicit locking, GuardedBy annotations, overall strategy and threadsafety at all). If there is no such documentation we have to reason about it.
But in my opion this just the best approach of you are on an academia trip (which is not bad).
There is a much more relieable, efficient and economic approach: ask humans!
Even the "worst & most commercial" oriented companies are building communities and often invest into open source environments (not neccessarily open source code but the comminity intention behind it): so if you start guessing things try to digest your thoughts so long and put it on (the correct) mailinglist or newsgroup.
What are the benefits?
well,

1. people with similar guessing find it on google
2. people with wrong guessing find the correct answer on google (more important perhaps)
3. the authors get the point and could pin it to their upcoming releases (better docs)
4. you do something good to the world
   

Just a word about the passed chapters i already read: very,very,very recommendable book! I am going to reject all osgi-bundles authored by people not reading this book (or having a reasonable past about concurrency). Damn.. thats so currious.
More on concurrency later!

ongoing news: domain and new book

hey folks, just do stay in action here are the news of the week:
1. OSGIfy.com
My recently registered domain osgify.com linked to a root server will present a vendor independent OSGi place. There are things comming down the roads, so stay tuned!
I talked with Peter Neugebauer and Niclas Hedhman from Jayway about it (these are the guys from ops4j.org by the way) and it turns out that i am not alone with the common neat for a better toolchain for OSGi technology. ("OSGi is a success, now we have to deal with it" was a nice description Richard gave in his presentation about the OBR2)

2. New book
Recommended by some OSGi people at munich recently, i ordered the book "Concurrency in Practice" by Brian Goetz and it just arrived today. So this is the one i am reading currently. If it is very good or very bad or it does worth to talk about then i will write about it of cause.
I am not sure if Peter is reading but i think he summed about about it with: "i didn't know that there is so much to say about concurrency before".. so we will see.


Some more things happened this week but this deserves another blog entry ;-)

OSGi getting publicity

Last week on the OSGi Community event in munich we spoke about a grassroot technologies and called ourselves grasroot-adopters..
But today i found the latest issue of the german Java-Magazin
headlining "OSGi - Die Zukunft Javas?" which can be translated as "OSGI - the future of java?".
This is good publicity for this emerging technology!
(btw. havn't read the magazine yet.. but i think they don't bash OSGi too much;-)

They subtitled tutorial using the Eclipse Equinox implementation - sure because they publish a sister magazine called "Eclipse-Magazine", too..

it has beed a long time..

Yes, i know! My last entry is long ago.
So first i just update my vita because some things have changed meanwhile:

I am studying computer science in hannover, germany.
But this blog won't be much about this academic stuff.
This is because my main interest keeps on software develelopment.
I am working now since 6 years as a freelance developer in an J2EE related environment.

Since i attended the JAOO 2006 in aahrus (as a student volunteer) i am a strong believer in the osgi technology.
Talking abouut conferences i attended to more events as of today:
QCon 2007 in London (watch here for pictures)
and the OSGi Community Event in munich

Specially the last one was very dedicated to the osgi topic which made up the special success for me (compared to the other - more enterprise related - conferences)

As i promise this blog will gain more attention by myself i will write about those things and new projects next time.

So long,
have fun!
Toni

PS: if you want to track my latest Open Source efforts just join the ops4j.org mailinglist or/and bugtracker.