So what is OSGi enRoute 1.0?
If this blog is too long to read (they tell me millennials have a reading problem :-), then you could start with the quick start tutorial.OSGi enRoute is an open source project that tries to make getting started developing on OSGi easier and more accessible to newcomers. Both Java and OSGi suffer a bit from the fact that they have been around for a long time.This makes it difficult for newcomers to separate the wheat from the chaff; there is so much history out there and even more software crimes in the name of backward compatibility. Really, a newcomer is quickly confused. From the OSGi Alliance, we should be proud of the number of "Hello World" tutorials for OSGi were it not for the fact that they're almost all demonstrating OSGi in the wrong way because they are old and not maintained.
When a newcomer wants to build a simple application with a GUI in Java, they first have to evaluate a zillion confusing libraries (almost 1 million on Maven Central) and then figure out how to build and debug this system using a myriad of tools. Often being confronted with bizarre APIs and patterns that are kept in the name of backward compatibility. Though there are some very interesting efforts, Karaf comes to mind, getting started is really quite daunting for any newcomer. The sad result is that many (especially the younger ones) will look elsewhere.
Therefore, OSGi enRoute does something Java developers generally have a hard time doing: committing ourselves. We wanted a developer to be able to have the skeleton of a working application up and running in minutes. That meant we needed to commit ourselves to certain choices. Shudder. Even more horrifying, we did not want to carry along 20 years of backward compatibility while making those choices. We decided to create a green-field taking advantage of OSGi Release 6 and Java 8. Though we realize this excludes a lot of potential design wins, it does allow us to compete with the non-Java worlds out there on a more even footing. It also allows us to showcase what happens when you use OSGi as it is intended. Quite awesome.
So we first created an API for enRoute. The idea of the OSGi enRoute base API is to provide a common environment for the most simple "Hello World" up to a REST or JSON RPC server that plays nice with an HTML-5 front end. Now this OSGi enRoute Base API is an API, not an implementation. This means that the OSGi enRoute Base API is not just Java code. It also contains web-resources for Angular, Bootstrap, and other popular HTML-5 programs. As stated, it is a limited but complete environment to actually get something done.
Though the OSGi specifications are very thorough, they tend to focus on the implementers of the specification and not focus that much on the users. We therefore started a service catalog that explains the services for users. The catalog explains where the service is useful and provides many snippets that can be copied and pasted. To further elucidate, we also provide a workspace with example projects that use OSGi enRoute to demonstrate how certain services actually work. Both the service catalog and the examples workspace more than welcome contributions. We hope we can make this the first place where people will go to see how a service should be used. And to be honest, the service catalog has a number of open spots so we can use some contributions.
We then also provided a number of tutorials. A quick start tutorial to get acquainted with the basic ideas or just to get some simple application done quickly. Then there is a more extensive tutorial that demonstrates the best practices ways of working in OSGi. It goes through the whole development chain from design to continuous integration releases. There is also an IoT tutorial that shows how you can use OSGi enRoute on a small machine.
Though we wanted to commit ourselves to a single API, we of course still wanted to allow different distros. A distro is a repository with implementations that provide all the capabilities that are required by the OSGi enRoute base API. The API promises and the distro provides.
Creating a distro is a major effort since its repository must be self consistent. And since not all bundles are perfect, the distro has to correct for their flaws in the build, resolve, release, and runtime phases.
Since we wanted the developer to start quickly, we picked a distro based on open source projects. You will find bundles in the distro from Amdatu, Apache Felix, Eclipse Equinox, Knopflerfish and other open source projects. Some API had no (suitable) implementations in open source. We therefore decided to create a GitHub repo with the missing bundles. Hopefully this is temporary. The goal of these bundles is to migrate to one of the open source foundations that dabble in OSGi. For this reason, some of the 'proprietary' OSGi enRoute APIs, like for example Authentication, DTOs, and others, is planned to be standardized for OSGi R7.
We decided to pick Eclipse for the IDE, with bndtools as the OSGi development plugin. Eclipse provides an amazing environment for developing Java applications and bndtools extends this amazingness right into the OSGi world. If you're forced to use another environment then do not try out the edit-debug cycle because it will be impossible to go back ... And once you're used to the version baselining you wonder how people an live without it.
For source control we obviously selected GitHub. Needs no further comment?
Though the IDE can perform all the releases of a software cycle, there is a huge advantage in having a command line build. We selected Gradle to perform this task. Gradle has the bnd plugin that can read the identical build data as bndtools does, ensuring fidelity between Eclipse and the Gradle builds. Gradle can be used in any project or workspace directory. It supports the same functionality as is available in Eclipse.
One of the best practices in our industry is continuous integration. We therefore picked Travis CI because it integrates so well with GitHub. All OSGi enRoute workspaces are ready to build on Travis without any special effort except signing up and activating.
Overall, OSGi enRoute provides a complete solution based on open source to develop OSGi-based systems. This makes it an excellent environment to learn OSGi and start making applications. Though experienced OSGi users will undoubtedly miss their favorite components, we hope they do give it a chance. It is a really nice environment to quickly create applications. And after all this is OSGi, so it is straightforward to modify the environment with your own components. You will even be able to plug in Maven and IntelliJ IDEA in the near future.
Though we are at release 1.0, we need help. We've prepared a complete environment for OSGi development but we need feedback, articles, examples, and tutorials from the community. We'd like to be the central hub where many other communities collaborate. Don't hesitate to contact us or send us pull requests.
The first usage for OSGi enRoute is the OSGi IoT Contest 2015. We've created an SDK on top of OSGi enRoute for managing a railroad track or to manage a train on that track. At the OSGi Community Event in Ludwigsburg Nov 3-5 2015, we will have a contest to see who can write the best bundle to manage a track or train. If you want to explore OSGi enRoute, you might want to participate. How much more fun can a real developer have than playing with OSGi and Lego® trains?
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