Hi Francesco,

Several elements described in your "vision" (particularly those beyond 
auto-discovery) are very similar to what I have in mind for the topic I 
proposed for the upcoming EclipseCon.  Would you like to collaborate on this 
topic? ;) 

-- rick litton

-----Original Message-----
From: Francesco Furfari [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thu 11/23/2006 5:27 PM
To: felix-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Autodiscovering Jams  - a "vision" about improving the user experience
 
Hi all,
moving from the jar autodiscovery idea, it's a while that I'm wondering 
how  the user experience will change in Java 7 with java modules. I 
haven't read the specification yet, so any idea here maybe is already 
addressed by the guys working on it, but if you like we could enjoy 
discussing about a new interaction style based on OSGi

I started to play around the  -jar option of Java executable by means of 
which, clicking on a jar, we are able to launch a Java application. In 
the following story whose actors are Peter and Sally the entity behind 
the scene is an enhanced Felix daemon or if you prefer felixw.

At last Peter has the time for testing the bundle developed by Sally.
It is there, on the desktop. Peter right-click on the .jam file and a 
popup menu lists all the OSGi profiles actually active. Sally has 
packaged the bundle to start using the "SallyTest" profile but Peter 
does not want to launch another felix container, and selects the already 
active "office4" profile. A new window is opened by the bundle.
 << Cool !!  this time the UI is very cool. >>
Peter then brings the main Office4 window in front of all to see whether 
the menu bar has been updated with the proper buttons.
<<All right. The buttons are showed and enabled, hence the services are 
now registered and discovered, fine. Now closing the opened window the 
bundle should not be stopped. Try. Perfect the buttons are still 
displayed. Now let me stop the bundle from the console.>>
<<Lets go ... where is the Felix Tray icon ,  here!, right-button 
click,  "active profiles" , "office4 ", sub-menu , "open console", done. 
Now which is the bundle id ?  mmm 35 ok stop 35! perfect no error 
messages and the buttons? disappeared! >>
<< fine, fine. Now lets go to see the communication between profiles. I 
want to test it with Spread4 but this time I launch the bundle as 
standalone application.>>
Peter double-click on the Sally's bundle icon and then on the 
Spread4.jam file.
Peter has configured  his Felix Deamon factory to start by default with 
a JMX agent and the Event Manager that's every container can be monitored.
<< Now filling this box the Sally's service should invoke the EA 
sendEvents  method, but before let me linking Spread4 with the bundle.>>
<< Link menu, link menu ... where is it? ah here! "active profile" 
submenu ,"SallyTest", done. Before to become crazy let me check if the 
connection with the agent has been established>>
Peter opens the Spread4 console clicking again on the Felix Tray icon 
and its sub-menus.
<< ok connection established, now from the "Avalable Services"  of 
Spread4 menus  I should find our service. Lets go to see. perfect! >>
<< will it work? try ...... sheet,  nothing happens,  why!? why? it has 
always worked before!! [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>
Peter opens the console of the standalone application and read the message:
"not able to cash TranslationManager-0.8.0.jam"
Then Peter goes to unzip the jam file to take a look at the SallyTest 
profile.
<<Let me think ...  mmm I understood, in the office4 profile the 
TranslationManager was already cached probably Sally has forgot to 
upload it in the Tomcat server>>
<<let me check>>
In auto.start property  the profile there's a pointer to a remote 
bundle, then
Peter opens the last JConsole based on OSGi to see what is installed in 
the remote server.
Peter has seen right, the last version of Translation Manager is missing.
Then Peter install the TranslationManager bundle using the OBR tab, 
Tomcat is Felix based too.
<< Done. Let me check the bundle directly from the browser so far>>
Peter launches Firefox3 (obviously osgi aware) then goes to the home 
site of the product and read the web page.
"clicking on the link you can installing the product as a standalone 
application or running it on an already active profile. Right clicking 
and choose 'save as' to save a bundle on your PC"
Peter right-click the link, and Firefox3 shows a menu of the active 
profiles of Peter's PC.
He choose "start as new", a  jvm is launched and a new "SallyTest-1" 
profile activated.
Peter then links again Spread4 to the "SallyTest-1" profile and checks 
again the service.
All works fine now. The EA is probed and when the box is filled the JMX 
agent sends a notification to the Spread4 jvm, the message is posted 
again in the Spread4 EA  and delivered to the subscribed services of the 
application .
<<good. Sally has done a good work with the bundle>>
<< tomorow I will try the features extraction and the fusion with our 
bundle.
I want to try the extraction of the 'Chat' feature by Eclipse to see if 
it can be merged successfully with our bundle >>
Peter closes all the active jvms from the Felix Tray icon and goes to home.

that's all
don't ask me what was developing Sally :-)
hoping it can enjoy and tickle for a further discussion

bests
francesco




Richard S. Hall wrote:
> Yeah, this is what I would have suggested too. This type of functionality 
> definitely does not need to be built into Felix.
>
> -> richard
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From:  Toni Menzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subj:  Re: autodiscover bundles?
> Date:  Thu 23. Nov 2006 9:27
> Size:  676 bytes
> To:  felix-dev@incubator.apache.org
>
> Hi Wouter,
> A very simple autodiscovery (based on observing a directory) is Peter 
> Krien's FileInstaller.
> You can find it here: http://www.aqute.biz/Code/FileInstall
> It's a pure bundle which works on any OSGi Implementation.
>
> I don't know if equinox functionality you descibe is usable on felix, 
> too? (would be nice to know)
>
> greets,
> Toni
>
> Wouter de Vaal schrieb:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm investigating osgi frameworks and I was wondering if Felix has
>> some sort of autodiscovery functionality as eclipse has. Some when a
>> jar is dumped in a folder, felix automatically loads this as an osgi
>> bundle.
>>
>> Thanx
>> Wouter
>>     
>
>
>   


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