Hi all,
we already have an extremely simple CXF installation in Apache Karaf
with the feature file we provide. On other platforms it is much harder
to install cxf:
- Equinox
- Felix
- Eclipse RCP (for GUIs)
Currently people using one of these platforms often use the DOSGi
distribution as it conveniently contains all needed bundles. Some use
cases of cxf are not covered though as the necessary bundles are not
part of the DOSGi distro.
Another big concern for me is that it is very hard to update the DOSGi
distro to a new CXF version. Basically this means to check and update
all dependencies by hand.
So I would like to discuss how we could improve this.
The first thing is to make it easier to create the DOSGi distro. I have
the idea to use the karaf feature files of CXF and DOSGi to create the
DOSGi distro.
Probably we would need another feature that reflects the basic bundles
that are normally already present in karaf and are a prerequisite for CXF.
The second thing is to create a P2 repository for each CXF release. The
idea is to also use the feature files for this. The P2 repository would
allow eclipse rcp users to easily and modularly add cxf to a target
platform in the same way you can add eclipse features. The easiest way
would be to publish the repo as a zip file in the maven repo. To make it
more convenient we could also publish it as an update site on the web.
One last thing is the system package exports. In Karaf 2.3+ we support
now special api jars that allow to exchange jdk apis and impls without
tweaking the system package exports. Can we also do this for plain
felix, equinox and eclipse rcp?
So what do you think? Should this be possible? Is it worth the effort?
Christian
--
Christian Schneider
http://www.liquid-reality.de
Open Source Architect
http://www.talend.com
