On May 2, 2008, at 20:22 , Alin Dreghiciu wrote:
What's also new is: "The PAR format is the recommended approach for packaging and deploying applications for the Platform. A PAR is simply a collection of OSGi bundles (modules) grouped together in a standard JAR file, along with a name and a version that uniquely identify the application. The PAR file is deployed as a single unit into the Platform. The Platform will extract all the modules from the PAR and install them. Third-party dependencies will be installed on-the-fly as needed.
Except for the third-party dependencies, it sounds an awful lot like the deployment packages introduced in the R4.1 spec. I would have to take a more detailed look to see how the two compare exactly, the benefits you quoted are still a bit "inprecise". For example, how do PAR files form an explicit scope around all the bundles in the application? Is the application hidden, is there some security mechanism in place, or what?
Purely from reading the comments on the list lately it seems quite a bit of "not invented here" is going on, where the OSGi specs merely form a platform to create your own standards on.
Greetings, Marcel
