Best way to add Third party maven dependencies in OSGi bundle

Question

I have just started with OSGI development and am struggling to understand what is the best way to handle dependent/third party JARs or maven dependencies.

ie if I'm creating a bundle then the likelyhood is that I will be using a few 3rd party JARs. When I create my bundle JAR to deploy to OSGI, obviously these 3rd party JARs are not included and thus the bundle will not run.

I understand that one option is to turn these JARs into bundles and also deploy them to the OSGI container. But I cannot do this for each and every maven dependency that I am going to use.

What is the best solution to handle this kind of situtation? Is there any way I can embed the jar file directly to bundles?

Below is my java main application that is starting the OSGi framework and then trying to install a simple bundle which has a dependency of Log4j. And in future, I can have some other third party maven dependency as well..

public class OSGiTest {

    private static Framework framework;

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        try {
            FileUtils.deleteDirectory(new File("felix-cache"));
            FrameworkFactory frameworkFactory = ServiceLoader.load(FrameworkFactory.class).iterator().next();

            framework = frameworkFactory.newFramework(new HashMap<String, String>());
            framework.start();

            installAndStartBundle("DependencyBundle", "1.0.0");

        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (BundleException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public static void installAndStartBundle(final String name, final String version) throws BundleException, Exception {

        final String basePath = "S:\\maven.repo\\dependency\\DependencyBundle\\1.0.0";
        final BundleContext bundleContext = framework.getBundleContext();
        final List<Bundle> installedBundles = new LinkedList<Bundle>();

        BundleActivator b = new org.ops4j.pax.url.mvn.internal.Activator();
        b.start(bundleContext);

        String filename = name + ModelConstants.DASH + version + ModelConstants.DOTJAR;
        String localFilename = ModelConstants.FILE_PROTOCOL + basePath+ File.separatorChar + filename;

        installedBundles.add(bundleContext.installBundle(localFilename));

        for (Bundle bundle : installedBundles) {
            bundle.start();
        }
    }
}

Below is my pom.xml file for OSGi bundle DependencyBundle -

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">

    <!-- POM Information about the Project -->
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.host.personalize.goldeneye.dependency</groupId>
    <artifactId>DependencyBundle</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
    <!-- Packing Type is bundle for OSGI Library Bundle -->
    <packaging>bundle</packaging>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>org.springframework.beans</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>org.springframework.context</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>org.springframework.core</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.servicemix.bundles</groupId>
            <artifactId>org.apache.servicemix.bundles.cglib</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.osgi</groupId>
            <artifactId>org.osgi.core</artifactId>
            <version>4.3.0</version><!--$NO-MVN-MAN-VER$ -->
            <type>jar</type>
            <scope>compile</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.osgi</groupId>
            <artifactId>org.osgi.compendium</artifactId>
            <version>4.3.0</version><!--$NO-MVN-MAN-VER$ -->
            <type>jar</type>
            <scope>compile</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>log4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
            <version>1.2.17</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <!-- Build Configration -->
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <!-- Apache Felix Bundle Plugin - For Generation of Manifest after Compile 
                phase -->
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.felix</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-bundle-plugin</artifactId>
                <!-- Configuration for generating the Manifest.mf -->
                <configuration>
                    <manifestLocation>src/main/resources/META-INF</manifestLocation>
                    <!-- Manifest Headers which need to customized during manifest generation -->
                    <instructions>
                        <Bundle-SymbolicName>DependencyBundle</Bundle-SymbolicName>
                        <Bundle-Activator>com.host.personalize.goldeneye.dependency.dependencybundle.Activator</Bundle-Activator>
                    </instructions>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

Answer 1

If you are just starting why jump in at the deep end by managing the intricacies of the framework runtime?

Take an easier, and arguably shorter route, and begin with a pre-build runtime such as Apache Karaf , you can simply install bundles using the pax-url project's maven url handler from the command line , you can also use the wrap: protocol to dynamically add valid OSGi manifests for dependencies.

Once you know what your doing using one, then you can learn about and build your own.