README

This library provides a mechanism to add or remove OSGi bundles within your application during runtime. In sum it can be considered a simple plug-in manager.

Prerequisites

To use this library you need some basic Java knowledge (Java 17 is a requirement to use this library). Maven is recommended to build the bundles and basic knowledge how to use it is assumed in this documentation. You can use a different build tool too, as long as you are able to use it to create valid OSGi bundles.

Usage

1. Create a Maven contract project, in which you define the Java types of your application that should be available to bundles.

2. Create a Maven project for a new bundle and implement one or multiple interfaces from your contract project as well as a BundleActivator class that exposes these implementations when the bundle is used.

3. Build your bundle project as OSGi bundle to create a bundle JAR file.

4. Instantiate the BundleRegistry provided by this library in your application and register bundle files into it.

5. Optionally show bundle information (e.g. potential conflicts with other bundles) in your application.

6. Install and start the registered bundle to make its interface implementations available in your application.

7. Retrieve the implementations and call them where needed.

For details regarding the individual usage steps, see Usage Details.

For recommendations how to design the contract project, see Contract Recommendations.

Notes regarding the usage of OSGi

While OSGi was successfully used as backbone of this library’s implementation, this does not necessarily mean that it should be used this way. The author is in no regard an OSGi expert and simply approached the topic with what seemed like reasonable solutions.

Also note that the direct usage of OSGi offers more flexibility regarding the high level architecture of your application.