Re: [oscar-devel] OSGi 2.0 Spec Released

[Richard S. H. <he...@un...>]

Yann SECQ wrote:

> I'm happy with the Class and Collaboration Diagram, but I don't
> understand why they didn't provide the sources for all org.osgi.*
> interfaces .... 


 From my understanding, you get them when you join OSGi (and a reference 
implementation)...that's not worth the $10k to me...

> What is the current state of the HTTP service ? 


I haven't touched it since I first toyed with it.  With my focus now 
shifting back to the framework (and my lectures), it still may be a 
while...although there are more people talking about putting in some effort.

> I've also started to write some questions/remarks about the new
> spec and Oscar. As it is growing with my readings, I've prefered
> to write it on a webpage instead of posting a big mail on the
> mailing-list (http://www.lifl.fr/~secq/thesis/gnosgi/osgi2.html).


Nice page.  I assume that I have previously pointed you to:

    http://fosgi.sourceforge.net

Regarding some of your questions/comments on your Web page:

The biggest hurdle for running Oscar on JDK 1.1.x (off the top of my 
head) is the ClassLoader changed substantially in JDK 1.2 and Oscar 
leverages those changes; thus the class loading mechanisms would have to 
be re-written.  This is not the type of change that you can just support 
both versions, so to get such support you would have to settle on the 
common denominator which is 1.1.x class loading functionality.

I am sure there are other more minor issues, like collection classes, 
etc. too.

Regarding starting Oscar, you are actually giving Oscar a user profile 
name, not a user name...although I sometimes treat it as a user name 
(like in the Messenger bundle).  The user concept is is a hold-over from 
the original project I was doing two years ago; the idea was that these 
components were going to provide services and would require some sort of 
"login" so it made more sense to unify it, rather than having each 
service have its own login procedure.

Now, it is largely used for just a profile (notice the lack of a 
password).  The reason why this is still useful is because it allows me 
to set up multiple profiles for different purposes (i.e., demos, 
testing, etc.) rather than just assuming that there is only one 
installation for the machine/user.  This of course, also allows you to 
have multiple Oscars going at the same time (either as programs or 
instances).  Further, it is only the OscarShell that asks for the 
profile name and this could be handled differently for someone embedding 
Oscar (such as I do in my Cibyl project which embeds Oscar and defines 
its own profile directory).

That's my $0.02...  :^)

-> richard