OSGi Tooling Blog

Exciting April

2009-04-22T12:14:00.010+02:00

It is an exciting time currently: OSGi gets a lot of buzz on the web currently, Pax Tools are getting release after release (Pax Runner 0.19.0 is out as well as Pax Exam 0.5 will follow soon), the proposal for a dedicated talk about pax tooling at the OSGi Devcon Europe in Zurich has been prepared.

OSGi Buzz in April
There is

Pax Runner 0.19.0
On April, 21, Alin Dreghicu released Pax Runner 0.19.0 which has the following highlights:

Support or Knopflerfish 2.3.0

Solve the problem introduced by Pax Runner - 0.18.0, that it did not work on windows anymore

Ability to supply Pax Runner options as system properties (-D)

Pax Exam 0.5.0
This release will be out very soon (as soon as i am back home from hungary) and will include a variety of improvements and some new features like

environment controlled debugging support (on/off by context)
specifying optional configuration based on context (PAXEXAM-59)
Inception of TinyBundles (see Exam Labs)
Support of latest pax tools (runner+url)

OSGi DevCon Europe 2009
We are preparing a proposal for 50mins packed with hands-on experience of Pax Construct, Pax Runner and Pax Exam .
Hopefully it will be accepted, seeing you in Zurich then ?

Personal Changes
Also, i will switch my main corporate project in may, while its not clear how it will end up.
Even though, i am still looking for interesting projects that incorporate OSGi.
Does you company want to embrace OPS4J Pax Tools ? How about having developers right inside your project ?

Easter Egg

2009-04-12T21:12:00.004+02:00

Low volume these days.
Because (at least in germany) eastern is about finding gifts/easter eggs.
I want to give you an easteregg as well.
For early adopters there is a new project in my ops4j laboratory called TinyBundles.
Its a small library that allows definition+creation of (tiny) bundles on the fly right inside your java app / pax exam testcase.
With this small library you can create small bundles like so:


newBundle()
         .set( Constants.BUNDLE_SYMBOLICNAME, "MyFirstTinyBundle" )
         .set( Constants.EXPORT_PACKAGE, "org.ops4j.pax.tinybundles.demo" )
         .set( Constants.IMPORT_PACKAGE, "org.ops4j.pax.tinybundles.demo,org.osgi.framework" )
         .set( Constants.BUNDLE_ACTIVATOR, MyFirstActivator.class.getName() )
         .addClass( MyFirstActivator.class )
         .addClass( HelloWorld.class )
         .addClass( HelloWorldImpl.class )
         .build( asStream() )

I found this quite useful when for example testing extender-bundles like PaxWeb or SpringDM.
As you see, resources are pulled from "current classpath" which means that you can easily contruct stuff like you do in ordinary java apps and pull them together using a fluent api like the above.
It is also trivial to create thounsands of (different) bundles to test high load for example.

Will try to put that into a regular pax project so that it get more "official".
That being said, the library is usable right now when used like specified in the demo sub project:
Demos.

Just checkout the whole project here, run mvn clean install (probably with "-Dmaven.test.skip=true to skip long running tests that may change all the time (remeber, its still in my local incubator ;) ,open it in your favourite ide and play with the demos if you like to.

Wishing everyone a nice easter weekend!

New and Newsworthy in Pax Exam 0.4

2009-04-10T01:20:00.004+02:00

Pax Exam 0.4 has been released today!
There are not less than 19(!) features and enhancements in this release compared to the 0.3 version about one month ago. (Pax Exam Roadmap)

New Maven Plugin

There is now a maven plugin shipping with exam that allows you to define most configurations including dependencies right inside your pom.
Just configure the plugin like so:





org.ops4j.pax.exam
maven-paxexam-plugin

 
   generate-paxexam-config
   
     generate-paxexam-config
   
 


 provided
 
   ${target-framework}

Then you let the test know you want to pull the configuration from maven instead of defining them right inside the TestCase:


@RunWith( org.ops4j.pax.exam.junit.MavenConfiguredJUnit4TestRunner.class )
public class DependencyTest
{

@Inject
BundleContext context;

@Test
public void usePlugin()
{
assertNotNull( context );
}
}

Maven Archetype
You can get started with paxexam very quickly by using the new archetype.
Just run for example this mvn command to create a pre-configured maven based pax exam project.


mvn archetype:create -DarchetypeGroupId=org.ops4j.pax.exam -DarchetypeArtifactId=paxexam-junit-archetype -DarchetypeVersion=0.4.0-SNAPSHOT -DgroupId=com.company -DartifactId=company-osgitests

Mock Frameworks
Pax Exam now has bundled profiles of the following mock frameworks for you ready to use:

EasyMock
Mockito
JMock

More Profiles
Thanks to Pax Runner 0.18, which comes with pax exam 0.4 we support much more profiles.
Here are some:

CXF (webservices,soap)
equinox configadmin
equinox DS
equinox even admin
equinox http service
equinox preference
felix configadmin
felix DS
felix event admin
felix webconsole
modulefusion.hibernate
modulefusion.ipojo
modulefusion.wicket
peaberry
servicemix kernel gshell (karaf, anyone ?)
spring dm
Pax Web
Pax URL
.. and much more

The latest supported frameworks are:

Apache Felix 1.6.0
Equinox 3.5 M6
Knopflerfish 2.2.1
Concierge 1.0 RC2

To see all resolved tasks have a look at Pax Exam Roadmap.

Public Professional Profile

2009-03-22T21:15:00.001+01:00

Just a quick note. There's now a public profile of my professional beings online here: http://osgify.com .

Have a look.

Vote for Java6 on OSX

2007-11-26T16:07:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-26T15:35:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-24T14:13:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-20T13:33:00.000+01:00

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?

2007-08-26T11:53:00.000+02:00

[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

2007-07-22T22:49:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-15T20:44:00.000+02:00

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,

people with similar guessing find it on google
people with wrong guessing find the correct answer on google (more important perhaps)
the authors get the point and could pin it to their upcoming releases (better docs)
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

2007-07-13T19:15:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-05T14:33:00.000+02:00

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..

2007-07-04T11:53:00.001+02:00

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.

about me and my current focus

2004-12-28T16:19:00.000+01:00

First, i want to introduce myself:

I am 24 years old and a student of geoinformatics (Geodetic Science) in hannover.
I am also a freetime programmer at a consultant company.

My work focuss on java server programming e.g. hibernate, spring, embedded server-functionallity, webservices etc. (someone may call this fake-j2ee ;-)
Currently, my eyes follow the nicely growing eve-directory-server project currenlty under the jakarta-incubator.
Following the mailinglist, they seem to push a first release the next days..

I'll descibe later why I need this ldap-stuff.. ;-)

My first entry

2004-12-28T14:25:00.000+01:00

Hi!
This is my first blog.
Maybe, I'll post a full blown blog later this day..

greets, Toni