Chapter 3. Building an OSGi Bundle

To help you get started quickly, you can invoke a Maven archetype to generate the initial outline of a Maven project (a Maven archetype is analogous to a project wizard). The following Maven archetype generates a project for building OSGi bundles.

The Apache Camel OSGi archetype creates a project for building a route that can be deployed into the OSGi container. To generate a Maven project with the coordinates, GroupId:ArtifactId:Version, enter the following command:

mvn archetype:generate \
  -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.camel.archetypes \
  -DarchetypeArtifactId=camel-archetype-blueprint \
  -DarchetypeVersion=${current-Camel-version} \
  -DgroupId=GroupId \
  -DartifactId=ArtifactId \
  -Dversion=Version

By default, the preceding archetypes create a project in a new directory, whose names is the same as the specified artifact ID, ArtifactId. To build the bundle defined by the new project, open a command prompt, go to the project directory (that is, the directory containing the pom.xml file), and enter the following Maven command:

mvn install

The effect of this command is to compile all of the Java source files, to generate a bundle JAR under the ArtifactId/target directory, and then to install the generated JAR in the local Maven repository.

If you already have a Maven project and you want to modify it so that it generates an OSGi bundle, perform the following steps:

Configure Maven to generate an OSGi bundle by changing the package type to bundle in your project’s pom.xml file. Change the contents of the packaging element to bundle, as shown in the following example:

<project ... >
  ...
  <packaging>bundle</packaging>
  ...
</project>

The effect of this setting is to select the Maven bundle plug-in, maven-bundle-plugin, to perform packaging for this project. This setting on its own, however, has no effect until you explicitly add the bundle plug-in to your POM.

To add the Maven bundle plug-in, copy and paste the following sample plugin element into the project/build/plugins section of your project’s pom.xml file:

<project ... >
  ...
  <build>
    <defaultGoal>install</defaultGoal>
    <plugins>
      ...
    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.felix</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-bundle-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.3.0</version>
        <extensions>true</extensions>
        <configuration>
          <instructions>
            <Bundle-SymbolicName>${project.groupId}.${project.artifactId}
            </Bundle-SymbolicName>
            <Import-Package>*</Import-Package>
          </instructions>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>

Where the bundle plug-in is configured by the settings in the instructions element.

For some specific recommendations on configuring the bundle plug-in for Apache CXF, see Section 3.3, “Packaging a Web Service in a Bundle”.

It is almost always necessary to specify the JDK version in your POM file. If your code uses any modern features of the Java language—such as generics, static imports, and so on—and you have not customized the JDK version in the POM, Maven will fail to compile your source code. It is not sufficient to set the JAVA_HOME and the PATH environment variables to the correct values for your JDK, you must also modify the POM file.

To configure your POM file, so that it accepts the Java language features introduced in JDK 1.8, add the following maven-compiler-plugin plug-in settings to your POM (if they are not already present):

<project ... >
  ...
  <build>
    <defaultGoal>install</defaultGoal>
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <source>1.8</source>
          <target>1.8</target>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>

This section explains how to modify an existing Maven project for a Apache CXF application, so that the project generates an OSGi bundle suitable for deployment in the Red Hat Fuse OSGi container. To convert the Maven project, you need to modify the project’s POM file and the project’s Blueprint file(s) (located in META-INF/spring).

To configure a Maven POM file to generate a bundle, there are essentially two changes you need to make: change the POM’s package type to bundle; and add the Maven bundle plug-in to your POM. For details, see Section 3.1, “Generating a Bundle Project”.

In order for your application to use the Apache CXF components, you need to import their packages into the application’s bundle. Because of the complex nature of the dependencies in Apache CXF, you cannot rely on the Maven bundle plug-in, or the bnd tool, to automatically determine the needed imports. You will need to explicitly declare them.

You need to import the following packages into your bundle:

javax.jws
javax.wsdl
javax.xml.bind
javax.xml.bind.annotation
javax.xml.namespace
javax.xml.ws
org.apache.cxf.bus
org.apache.cxf.bus.spring
org.apache.cxf.bus.resource
org.apache.cxf.configuration.spring
org.apache.cxf.resource
org.apache.cxf.jaxws
org.springframework.beans.factory.config

Example 3.1, “Configuration of Mandatory Import Packages” shows how to configure the Maven bundle plug-in in your POM to import the mandatory packages. The mandatory import packages appear as a comma-separated list inside the Import-Package element. Note the appearance of the wildcard, *, as the last element of the list. The wildcard ensures that the Java source files from the current bundle are scanned to discover what additional packages need to be imported.

<project ... >
    ...
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.felix</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-bundle-plugin</artifactId>
                <extensions>true</extensions>
                <configuration>
                    <instructions>
                        ...
                        <Import-Package>
                            javax.jws,
                            javax.wsdl,
                            javax.xml.bind,
                            javax.xml.bind.annotation,
                            javax.xml.namespace,
                            javax.xml.ws,
                            org.apache.cxf.bus,
                            org.apache.cxf.bus.spring,
                            org.apache.cxf.bus.resource,
                            org.apache.cxf.configuration.spring,
                            org.apache.cxf.resource,
                            org.apache.cxf.jaxws,
                            org.springframework.beans.factory.config,
                            *
                        </Import-Package>
                        ...
                    </instructions>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
    ...
</project>

A Web services project typically requires code to be generated. Apache CXF provides two Maven plug-ins for the JAX-WS front-end, which enable tyou to integrate the code generation step into your build. The choice of plug-in depends on whether you develop your service using the Java-first approach or the WSDL-first approach, as follows:

The OSGi Configuration Admin service defines a mechanism for passing configuration settings to an OSGi bundle. You do not have to use this service for configuration, but it is typically the most convenient way of configuring bundle applications. Blueprint provides support for OSGi configuration, enabling you to substitute variables in a Blueprint file using values obtained from the OSGi Configuration Admin service.

For details of how to use OSGi configuration properties, see Section 3.3.7, “Configuring the Bundle Plug-In” and Section 7.6, “Add OSGi configurations to the feature”.

PID strings (symbolic-name syntax) allow hyphens in the OSGI specification. However, hyphens are interpreted by Apache Felix.fileinstall and config:edit shell commands to differentiate a "managed service" and "managed service factory". Therefore, it is recommended to not use hyphens elsewhere in a PID string.