In the application that my group is working on, we've tried both eclipse extension points and plain-old OSGi services with the whiteboard pattern to allow bundles to contribute components to a GUI.
In our case, bundles can contribute "views" to an echo2 (the web framework we're using) web application. A "view" is rendered as an individual tab in the GUI. After trying both approaches we opted for the OSGi service/whiteboard pattern approach over the eclipse extension point mechanism, mainly because it's a solution that works across OSGi framework implementations. Eclipse does provide graphical editors for defining extension points and creating extensions, which is kind of nice, but implementors end up doing about the same amount of work in either case (ie, eclipse extension points or OSGi service). > but probably it would not require more > then the org.eclipse.core.runtime bundle to be deployed The eclipse dependencies for implementing extension points are fairly light. I believe it required equinox.common, equinox.registry and core.jobs. - Ben On 10/5/06, Peter Neubauer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In general I agree with your aversion of the extension model, since > extension points make you provide services that you already know the > target scenario for, something that is right against the OSGi and SOA > principles. > > But especially in GUI and visual scenarios I think you more often than > not already know your target for some contribution to the user > interface anyway, so, keeping the solution overly generic just adds > documentation and doesn't bring that big benefits, but of course there > may be other aspects, like scaling extension point approaches over > several OSGi instances etc etc that do not fit with OSGi potential. > > /peter > > On 10/5/06, Niclas Hedhman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Thursday 05 October 2006 02:16, Peter Neubauer wrote: > > > Hi folks, > > > I wonder if anyone is interested in adding Eclipse extension points on > > > top of Pax Wicket, at least in order to get a showcase how to use it. > > > Have not looked into it yet, but probably it would not require more > > > then the org.eclipse.core.runtime bundle to be deployed, and the you > > > could add extensions and extension points on top of the existing Pax > > > Wicket container mechanism. I can think of different application > > > specific EP, such as the conventions used in the DeptStore showcase, > > > but even a full blown convention such as the one in the Eclipse > > > Workbench, implemented currently in a JSP centric variant in RSP-UI. > > > > I don't grok the extension mechanism and not a user of it at all. > > > > > WDYT, anyone wanting to join me doing a small test? > > > > Personally not, but go ahead. > > > > Cheers > > Niclas > > > > _______________________________________________ > > general mailing list > > general@lists.ops4j.org > > http://lists.ops4j.org/mailman/listinfo/general > > > > _______________________________________________ > general mailing list > general@lists.ops4j.org > http://lists.ops4j.org/mailman/listinfo/general > _______________________________________________ general mailing list general@lists.ops4j.org http://lists.ops4j.org/mailman/listinfo/general
