[kepler-dev] What ever came of the OSGI initiative?

[Aaron Schultz]

Hi Frank,

Generally, I think most everyone working on Kepler eventually realized 
that an OSGi-ified Kepler/Ptolemy was the best possible end result for 
modularization of the system.  Unfortunately that realization happened 
too late and the feeling was that we would not be able to achieve that 
goal with the existing resources in a consistent and backward compatible 
manner.  The system that was produced meets most of the goals of the 
original Kepler Core proposal.

Christopher!  Glad to hear you have some funding to continue OSGi work.  
Let me know if any more becomes available  :)   I have no doubt we could 
find a good technical solution within the OSGi framework that maintains 
an "open system".  Reflection is such a nasty business...

Aaron Schultz


On 5/10/2011 10:46 AM, Christopher Brooks wrote:
> Hi Frank,
> My understanding is that some research was done and it was
> found not to work out for Kepler.
>
> Try using google to search for
> site:http://lists.nceas.ucsb.edu osgi
>
> Some good things did come out of that effort though.  One thing
> is that I cleaned up a bunch of unneeded dependencies in the
> ptolemy tree.
>
> My current understanding is that a big issue is with how MoMLParser
> instantiates actor classes by using reflection.  Apparently there
> is an issue with OSGi where OSGi needs to know in advance what
> classes are in the classpath.  The problem is that MoMLParser does not
> know in advance what classes will be instantiated.  I don't find closed
> systems to be that compelling for research.  A closed system is useful
> for deployment. Here, closed means that only a predefined set of classes
> will *ever* be loaded.
>
> I'm a little foggy on the details, but I believe Eclipse has a buddy
> annotation that could help.
>
> In other news, I have funding to do some of the OSGi work, but
> it is not scheduled until next year.  I think I blocked out about
> 6 months at 30% time.
>
> In other, other news, I noticed that Taverna is in the process
> of releasing an OSGi, see
> http://www.mygrid.org.uk/dev/issues/browse/TOSGI
>
> _Christopher
>
> On 5/9/11 6:34 PM, Frank White wrote:
>> Hello All:
>>
>> What ever came of the Kepler OSGI initiative? I see there were some
>> OSGI investigations back in 2008, but I can't seem to find anything that
>> documents a final decision. Appreciate any insights you might provide.
>> Thanks!
>> Frank
>>
>