Are there plans to upgrade to OSGi R4.3 soon?

[ulrichromahn]

JBoss OSGi currently supports R4.2 both the standard and enterprise specs.

With R5.0 Core released in March 2012 and R5.0 Enterprise released in June 2012 and in addition, R4.3 (Core and Enterprise) released in 2011, JBoss OSGi is now behind the curve.

Instead of upgrading to R5.0, it may be better to upgrade to R4.3 first and then upgrade to R5.0.

Any ideas yet how easy or painful this would be?

[thomas.diesler]

The R5 Core Framework is the next thing on the roadmap

https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBOSGI-616

[ulrichromahn]

Agreed that this should be the next step for JBoss OSGi V2.0 which I assume will become part of JBoss AS 7.2, but why not upgrade to R4.3 for JBoss AS 7.1.x?

There are some significant enhancements in R4.3 that will certainly prove very useful for any application server integration. A high-level list of enhancements are listed on the OSGi page at wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSGi#New_in_Release_4.3.

Plus, the latest version of Apache Karaf 2.3 together with Apache Felix and Eclipse Equinox now fully support R4.3, so why not JBoss OSGi?

[thomas.diesler]

We do R5. However, you are of course very welcome to participate and help to do the 4.3 features first.

[ulrichromahn]

I am more than happy and interested to take a crack at doing this. I would, however benefit from a bit of "bootstrapping" from you.

I assume all the main sources of JBoss OSGi can be found here: https://github.com/jbosgi

There are currently 24 public repos but quite a few have not seen any activity for years at times. So it would be helpful to me if you could tell me which repos I need to fork in order to get going.

[thomas.diesler]

Wonderful. You would want to fork https://github.com/jbosgi/jbosgi-framework/tree/r5

I'm currently waiting on feedback from the Alliance to get the TCK setup fixed.

https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBOSGI-502

There are however a number of todos that do not need to block on the TCK setup

[tdiesler@tdvaio jbosgi-framework]$ git grep R5

core/src/main/java/org/jboss/osgi/framework/internal/AbstractBundleState.java:        // [TODO] R5 Bundle.getDataFile

core/src/main/java/org/jboss/osgi/framework/internal/AbstractBundleState.java:        // [TODO] R5 Bundle.compareTo

core/src/main/java/org/jboss/osgi/framework/internal/BundleManagerPlugin.java:    // The framework version. This is the version of the org.osgi.framework pack

core/src/main/java/org/jboss/osgi/framework/internal/FrameworkProxy.java:        // [TODO] R5 Bundle.getDataFile

core/src/main/java/org/jboss/osgi/framework/internal/FrameworkProxy.java:        // [TODO] R5 Bundle.compareTo

core/src/main/java/org/jboss/osgi/framework/internal/NoFilter.java:        // [TODO] R5 Filter.matches

core/src/main/java/org/jboss/osgi/framework/internal/PackageAdminPlugin.java:    // is also flawed and from R5 deprecated so we're doing a best effort

core/src/main/java/org/jboss/osgi/framework/spi/AbstractBundleAdaptor.java:        // [TODO] R5 Bundle.getDataFile

core/src/main/java/org/jboss/osgi/framework/spi/AbstractBundleAdaptor.java:        // [TODO] R5 Bundle.compareTo

[ulrichromahn]

I just forked the jbosgi/jbosgi-framework repo to uromahn/jbosgi-framework and created a local clone.

I then inspected the branches in this repo and have now a few more questions:

1. Why should I start with the r5 branch and not with master? From what I understand, 'r5' is the active work to upgrade to OSGi R5. However, I want to upgrade from R4.2 to R4.3 and hence shouldn't I start with master and create a parallel branch 'r43' and repeating those steps in the 'r5' branch? Or would you recommend just starting a branch 'r43' off of 'r5' and then retroactively try to "downgrade" R5 to R4.3?
2. There are quite a few other repos that have references to OSGi R4.2. Wouldn't I have to fork them as well and upgrade them to R4.3?
3. Lastly, would you (RedHat) have access to the R4.3 TCK or do I need to acquire a license, which would be totally out of my personal budget and I don't know if my employer would be willing to "sponsor" this work.

[thomas.diesler]

Re #1: As I said we do R5. There won't be any resources going into an R43 effort - at least not from the JBoss side. R5 does not need to be completed fully to be a valid R43 implementation. This will just be a side effect of the R5 effort.

Re #2: In the framework R5 branch there are no dependencies on SNAPSHOTS. A fork of a dependency is only necessary when we need to change something in a dependency. There are corresponding R5 branches for all jbosgi-* dependencies.

Re #3: see #1. Access to the TCK is restricted to selected individuals. There is a bunch of red tape that must be completed to get access. AFAIK, one of the requirements would be that you are a RedHat employee. Lets focus on the low hanging fruit first. If needed I can conceptually duplicate TCK tests in the jbosgi testsuite.

[ulrichromahn]

So, you are essentially saying "why bother with R4.3 when we can upgrage to R5"?

I must say you have a valid point here.

I will then revisit my plans and may actually start helping out with the R5 implementation.