Re: [Junit-devel] OSGi-ify JUnit / bug 2720888

[lukewpatterson <luk...@gm...>]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 3:19 PM, Mike Forsberg <bi...@io...> wrote:
> ... exposing JUnit as a service ...
>

I'll clarify the level of OSGi support I'm referring to.  I was only hoping
for compliance with the modularity/classloading portion of the OSGi spec,
not the dynamic services portion.

JUnit would not code to any OSGi API.  No JUnit API would change.  Existing
consumer code which compiles to JUnit wouldn't need to change.

The "modularity/classloading" portion I referred to above basically means
that JUnit just needs proper OSGi entries added to the META-INF/manifest.mf. 
With the proper entries, the JUnit jar would become a "bundle" in the OSGi
world.  A "bundle" is basically a "module".  i.e. a module contains
packages, packages contain classes, classes contain fields/methods

The manifest would explicitly declare (at the module level), which java
packages JUnit imports (depends on) and which java packages JUnit exports
(provides to others).

In order for the JUnit jar to be considered a first-class citizen (can
import/export packages directly) in the OSGi world, it needs to have valid
manifest entries.  Currently, when other projects are running in an OSGi
container, they can't directly run against the official JUnit jar.  They
must custom-wrap the JUnit jar so its packages can be available at runtime.

If you have some free minutes, please consider reading sections 1 through
1.4.3 of Neil Bartlett's "OSGi in practice" book [1].  I think he explains
the core concepts pretty well (a lot better than I could).


Thanks,

Luke


[1] http://neilbartlett.name/blog/osgibook/
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