Jan Thomä: August 2008 Archives

I have created a small demo video which gives you a quick tour around Osmorc. It explains a basic project setup, the Osmorc facet and how to create run configurations to run and debug OSGi bundles from IntelliJ. It does by far not cover all things to know about Osmorc, but it should give you a nice start.

Please provide feedback about the video, as this is my first try on such stuff and there are probably a lot of things to be improved in further videos. Looking forward to your comments.

Link: Osmorc Demo Video

After a lot of work we finally pushed version 0.6.0 of Osmorc out to JetBrain’s plugin registry. This new version comes with a lot of added functionality, most notably:

• You can now build, run and debug your OSGi bundles directly inside IntelliJ. This works so far for Knopflerfish and Apache Felix (Equinox is scheduled for the next version).
• The bundle’s JAR file is built automagically with IntellIJ’s internal build tool when you build a OSGi-enabled module.
• Osmorc can automatically manage the Manifest file for you (imported and exported packages, etc.). We have integrated the well-known and rock-solid bnd tool for this. In case this is not working for you, or you prefer total control, you can still manage the manifest file manually.
• Framework classes are made available to your project once you select an OSGi framework to be used with your project.
• Osmorc should now work a lot better with existing build scripts in Ant/Maven. You can specify where Osmorc should put the Jar file, where the Manifest file should be placed, etc. So now you don’t have to decide between using the internal build for faster roundtrip and your external build for added flexibility - just mix and match as you see fit.
• You can now report bugs directly inside IntelliJ using the newly created OsmorcIssueSubmitter plugin. We decided to create a second plugin for this as the issue submitter is unlikely to change very often and we’d like to keep the download size small.

And of course - guess what - we fixed a ton of bugs. We think that this release should enable you to productively develop OSGi bundles in IntellIJ. So how about firing up your IntellIJ and downloading Osmorc 0.6.0 right now? We look very much forward to your feedback and suggestions for the next version!