Re: Using OSG for Classpath

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Kriens <address@hidden> writes:

Peter> 1/ Could classpath be split up in multiple, independent projects? I.e.
Peter>    every javax should have its own JAR.

Peter> 2/ Could you use the OSGi modularization headers for JAR files to
Peter>    make these libraries deployable? These headers allow you to keep
Peter>    implementation code protected from other JARs when running on an
Peter>    OSGi system. These headers are ignored for other systems.
Peter>    FYI, OSGi is used in Eclipse, Apache and in many commercial
Peter>    projects. I would be more than willing to help to get these headers
Peter>    in place.

Peter> 3/ Cross dependencies should be absolutely minimized. I noticed
Peter>    java.nio was used in several implementation packages.

The idea of building subsets of Classpath has come up a number of
times.  I think the fundamental problem is not that anybody is opposed
to it in theory, but more that nobody has really taken the time to
implement a workable solution.  Informally I would say that it seems
like most current Classpath developers are interested in getting all
of J2SE working and aren't, typically, super concerned about embedded
applications.

I think a workable solution has to consider not only deployment, but
also development.  Any approach that can't be automated and, say,
can't work directly in Eclipse, is probably not going to work out that
well.  (E.g., look at the current class-dependencies.conf files, which
afaics are hand generated and unmaintained.  This kind of thing
doesn't scale...)

I've seen the OSGi idea come up before, in particular on the Harmony
list.  I still don't understand what concrete benefit it provides.
Could you describe that?

Tom