ESA Maven Plugin

This page describes the esa-maven-plugin version 1.0.0 which is available from Maven Central.

The ESA Maven Plugin provides the ability to generate ESA archives using Maven. The ESA archive format is defined in the Subsystems Service Specification which was part of OSGi Enterprise R5. An ESA archive can optionally contain an Subsystem manifest (SUBSYSTEM.MF). This can be added in one of two ways

  1. Hand written and added into the archive.

  2. Generated based on pom configuration.

Using the Plugin

The plugin is included by as follows:

<project>
  ...
  <packaging>esa</packaging> <!-- set packaging type to esa -->

  <build>
	<plugins>
	  <plugin>
	    <groupId>org.apache.aries</groupId>
	    <artifactId>esa-maven-plugin</artifactId>
	    <version>1.0.0</version>
        <extensions>true</extensions>
	  </plugin>
	</plugins>
  </build>
</project>

By default it will not generate a manifest, so in the above example it will attempt to copy a pre-defined SUBSYSTEM.MF from src/main/resources/META-INF. If that file does not exist, then no Subsystem manifest will be included.

Generating an SUBSYSTEM.MF

The following example pom.xml shows how to get the plugin to generate an SUBSYSTEM.MF based on the pom configuration:

<project>
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>org.something</groupId>
  <artifactId>esa-maven-plugin-test</artifactId>
  <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>esa</packaging>

  <dependencies>
    <!-- Put some dependencies in here -->
  </dependencies>

  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.aries</groupId>
        <artifactId>esa-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.0.0</version>
        <extensions>true</extensions>
        <configuration>
          <generateManifest>true</generateManifest>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

The pom to subsystem manfiest header mapping is as follows:

  • Pom <groupId/>.<artifactId/> -> Subsystem-SymbolicName

  • Pom <name/> -> Subsystem-Name

  • Pom <version/> -> Subsystem-Version (cleaned up for OSGi)

  • Pom <description/> -> Subsystem-Description

  • Pom <dependencies/> -> Subsystem-Content

Overriding Subsystem-SymbolicName

The subsystem symbolic name defaults to the ${project.groupId}.${project.artifactId}. The following shows how to override this:

<configuration>
  <instructions>
    <Subsystem-SymbolicName>${project.artifaceId}</Subsystem-SymbolicName>
  </instructions>
</configuration>

Including bundles in the archive

By default, the archive will only include the direct dependencies of the project. The <archiveContent/> element can be used to control the archive artifact contents. The following shows how to include all direct and transitive dependencies.

<configuration>
  <archiveContent>all</archiveContent>
</configuration>

The following shows how to exclude all dependencies from the archive. This is useful if you just want the subsystem definition and will use a bundle repository to provision the bundles during deployment.

<configuration>
  <archiveContent>none</archiveContent>
</configuration>

The following specifies the default of including only the direct dependencies (assumes the subsystem contents and direct dependencies are the same).

<configuration>
  <archiveContent>content</archiveContent>
</configuration>

Content Bundle Start Ordering

By default, the Subsystem runtime can start content bundles in any order. The OSGi start level service is not applicable to subsystems. You can specify the start order of the bundles based on the order in which they’re expressed as dependencies in the maven pom using the following:

<configuration>
  <startOrder>dependencies</startOrder>
</configuration>

Including an Existing Subsystem manifest

If you don’t wish to generate the Subsystem manifest based on the pom configuration, you can add an existing one as follows:

<configuration>
  <subsystemManifestFile>${basedir}/src/main/resources/OSGI-INF/SUBSYSTEM.MF</subsystemManifestFile>
</configuration>

Including Other Headers

You can add any other headers in addition to those calculated from the pom configuration. For example, the following specifies the Subsystem Use-Bundle header and sets the Subsystem-Type to be a feature:

<instructions>
    <Use-Bundle>org.apache.aries.test.Bundle;version=1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</Use-Bundle>
    <Subsystem-Type>osgi.subsystem.feature</Subsystem-Type>
</instructions>