As I mentioned in my posts on Web-plug, I did not consider OSGi or Spring DM at that time because of learning curve and lack of time. But web-plug also has its own set of limitations. Versioning is a big issue for example. I did not try to extend the classloader of Tomcat for this. But off late OSGi and Spring DM has caught my attention again, as I have some time to focus on something new. Also I find that some really good and highly detailed books are out there in the market.So documentation is now reaching the state where it should be for a new technology and framework to be easily and widely acceptable.
Now I picked up – Spring Dynamic Module in Action (Manning, 2010). Its a wonderful book as most of them that I have read in Manning’s in Action series. This is a must read book. Please buy it and do not dowload a pirated e-book. The authors and publications take lot of pain in producing a good book. The examples in this book are based on Equinox OSGi container. I thought of using them on Apache Felix. So the first step is installing the OSGi container and then the framework.
Download and Install Apache Felix 3.0.9 from the link below:
http://mirror.atlanticmetro.net/apache//felix/org.apache.felix.main.distribution-3.0.9.zip
Unzip the zip file in a folder named felix-framework-3.0.8. e.g – C:\felix-framework-3.0.8
Now create a run.cmd file and save it in the felix-framework-3.0.8 folder using your favourite text editor.The file contains the instructions to launch the Felix framework as shown below:
java -jar bin/felix.jar
Once the run.cmd file is ready, we are all set to launch the framework. So, launch the command prompt and type run. The gogo console is shown below.
Note – Spring DM has now moved to Eclipse Foundation as Gemini Blueprint project. But its still in incubation stage. So we will download and use Spring DM 2.0.0.M1 from the link below:
Just unzip the distribution and copy the bundles from dist and lib folders. The list is shown in figure below. The four selected bundles are core framework bundles. The rest are for Spring DM.
Just copy the files to the bundle folder (in this case - C:\felix-framework-3.0.8\bundle).Now once again fire the command run.cmd and you will the gogo console now spits some log4j warning.
The problem is well documented in the book. I will try to create a fragment in the next post to solve this on Apache Felix.
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