Quick OSGi projects using Maven archetypes

Have you ever wanted to try OSGi, but found setting up the build and working out the manifest too much of a chore?

If so then help is at hand - over the last few months, I have been developing a set of Maven archetypes and plugins to automate much of the manual work required in creating an OSGi project. Recently I also provided Windows batch files and Linux shell scripts to make it even easier:

http://wiki.ops4j.org/confluence/display/ops4j/Pax+Construct

All you need is Maven2 and a Java5 runtime - the best part is the OSGi manifest attributes are automatically calculated for you by Peter Krien's wonderful bnd tool, connected to Maven by the maven-bundle-plugin from the Apache Felix project.

For example, the following commands would create a simple skeleton OSGi web application ... and deploy it to Equinox:


pax-create-project -g simple.project -a osgi-web-app

cd osgi-web-app

mvn install

pax-wrap-jar -g javax.servlet -a servlet-api -v 2.5
pax-import-bundle -g org.ops4j.pax.logging -a api -v 0.9.4
pax-import-bundle -g org.ops4j.pax.logging -a jcl -v 0.9.4
pax-import-bundle -g org.ops4j.pax.logging -a slf4j -v 0.9.4
pax-import-bundle -g org.ungoverned.osgi.bundle -a http -v 1.1.2
pax-create-bundle -p my.osgi.code.myBundle -n myBundle

mvn install pax:provision


all you need to add is the internal application code ;)