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The other day i noticed that the move from the old server has broken quite a few things in here, most notably the comments function. I therefore decided to do some upgrading to Movable Type 5 and fixing a few missing redirects in the server configuration so things are now back in working state.

The first version of Osmorcs 1.2 version series is to be part of IntelliJ 9.0.2 Ultimate Edition, which is scheduled to be released soon. Users of the community edition will be able to download it through the plugin repository (though buying IDEA Ultimate is of course strongly encouraged ;).

This release contains the integration with PAX Runner, that took a really long time to implement. This integration vastly improves Osmorcs reliability when it comes to starting OSGi containers. Also a much wider range of versions of all four major OSGi containers is now supported. The version of PAX Runner that is part of Osmorc has been slightly modified, so it can also launch Eclipse RCP based applications in Equinox. Even though PAX Runner launches it’s own VM with the OSGi container, you don’t need to resort to remote debugging but you can actually just press the “Debug” button in IntelliJ to debug your bundles.

1.2.0 is a major improvement of Osmorc and I am very excited and happy about it. I hope you like it as well. Feel free to leave comments here on the blog and send in feature requests and bug reports at our issue tracker!

Version 1.1.1 of the plugin has been released to the plugin repository yesterday. It is also part of the next EAP of IntellIJ IDEA. This release is a bugfixing release which fixes a lot of annoying and partially showstopping bugs in 1.1.0.

Meanwhile work on 1.2 has continued. Pax integration is running solid for all four frameworks, debugging is working as well. Support for RCP applications is currently being added. This will provide a solid foundation for running OSGi frameworks in the future. Once this foundation is in and working, work will continue on the other items that have been mentioned in the previous post.

In the last few weeks work on Osmorc has been a bit slow due to team changes, the holidays and a few personal things I had to attend to. However, development has come up to speed again so I’d like to bring up a few of the things I am working at to your attention.

• Pax Runner: There were many requests on the issue tracker and the plugin page to support Pax Runner. Current integration looks promising, the basic things like starting up a framework and deploying some bundles work very well. More advanced stuff like Eclipse applications and debugging is still in the works.
• UI Changes: The UI will be further streamlined. The run configuration dialog has become somewhat bloated and looks a bit different for each OSGi service - this will change. I am also looking at splitting up IDE and Project configuration so Osmorc behaves like all other plugins in that regard.
• Interaction with the running OSGi framework: Currently we only provide a console for Equinox and nothing for other OSGi frameworks. First step will be providing a console for all frameworks. A second step could be some graphical interaction (something like the GUI that Knopflerfish provides).
• Documentation: OSGi is a complex matter and Osmorc usage isn’t as straightforward as it could be. The documentation is somewhat outdated as well. A few tutorial videos could help as well.

So far these are the things being currently under work. The blog will hopefully see a few more entries than pure release announcements in 2010 as well. So stay tuned in . If you work with Osmorc and require a feature, please feel free to submit an issue to the issue tracker.

The Osmorc blog has now been moved over to a new server. A few links might still be broken but this will be fixed in the next few days. Development on Osmorc is continuing, there will be another post about future development here soon.

I’m leaving this project. Read about the reasons for it on my personal blog.

It’s not the end of the project though as Jan intends to keep on developing Osmorc.

Osmorc 1.1.0 is actually the second release of Osmorc for IDEA Community Edition. The first one was released last week. We didn’t announce it then, but now it’s official. Osmorc is now also available for the community edition and to celebrate this we also release a preview of a new user’s guide for Osmorc.

We are aware that Osmorc needs documentation. We keep being asked the same question over and over again. So we take a new try at the task of providing documentation. This time it’s a book - a user’s guide -. It’s far from finished. Currently it’s only available as PDF and only in the A4 format, but we’ll provide other formats in the future and maybe we’ll generate JavaHelp and other formats from it.

The plugin is available through IDEA’s plugin manager and the user’s guide can be downloaded from our SourceForge project page. The user’s guide may also be of interest to users of IDEA Ultimate which bundles the plugin.

Yesterday we released version 0.14.0 for IDEA 8. This release contains nearly all of the features and bugfixes we’ve done for the bundled IDEA 9 version we’ve been developing since early May.

Here’s the changelog:

• Merged Equinox Run config into OSGi Bundles run config.
• QuickFix that registers a Bundle Activator in the manifest file or Osmorc facet configuration.
• Osmorc facet detection now only requires that a manifest file contains a Bundle-SymbolicName.
• Osmorc now makes sure that a manifest file is not readonly before trying to change it.
• Bundle compiler has been rewritten and now supports bnd files much better.
• Facet configuration dialog has received a rework to make it more intuitive to use.
• Lots of smaller bugfixes.

This will most likely be the last Osmorc release for IDEA 8.

Some of you may already have heard the big news. Osmorc will be a bundled plugin in the next major release of IDEA, which is codenamed Maia and will most likely become IDEA 9.

The first Maia EAP releases already contain Osmorc. We are currently also adding changes we do for the Maia version to the IDEA 8 version and will have some more releases of Osmorc for IDEA 8, but eventually at some point in the future we will switch to only develop the Maia version.

You should be able to open projects using Osmorc with Maia and find that they still work. Be sure to make a backup of your project settings as you might not be able to open it with IDEA 8 and find that it still works there afterwards. Maia-Osmorc for example converts all Equinox run configurations to enhanced OSGi bundle run configurations. That kind of enhanced OSGi Bundle run configuration is not available in the current Osmorc release for IDEA 8. It will be available in the next IDEA 8 version, though.

Please note that issues for Maia-Osmorc should be posted on the component OSGI Support in the project IDEA Feedback. Please also post new feature requests in that area and not in the old Osmorc project.

After a few months of work we have finally released Osmorc 0.13.0, which can be downloaded using IntelliJ’s plugin manager. The most notable new feature is integration with IntelliJs Maven plugin:

• Osmorc can now detect if your maven configuration indicates that the project is an OSGi bundle and will automatically create/update an Osmorc facet, once you synchronize your POM with IntelliJ.
• Manifest headers that are configured with the maven-bundle-plugin will be read from your POM and entered into the facet configuration.
• When you open the POM, Osmorc will detect and highlight any dependencies which are not OSGi-ready (e.g are missing the OSGi headers in their manifest).
• As a quick fix for this situation Osmorc now contains a search dialog which helps you in finding an OSGi-capable replacement for these dependencies inside the Springsource repository.
• Osmorc will also add the repository URLs for the Springsource Repository to your POM, if you chose to import a library from there through the search dialog.

There were also some minor improvements:

• The default rule which is used for bundlifying non-OSGi libraries is now “Import-Package: *;resolution:=optional”. This is the same rule that is used within the maven-bundle-plugin and should therefore work in most cases.
• Bnd configuration files which were set up in the facet configuration are now actually used -there were ignored in the past.

As always, we are asking for your feedback on this new version. Feel free to drop us a line here or file an issue at our Issue Tracker.