Best solution for using AOP with OSGI?

Question

I am using Equinox, so the Equinox Aspect project seems like a no-brainer, but that project appears to be inactive and has only one page of documentation that leaves me hanging at the end.

Other than that project, I do not see many options for using AOP in OSGI. Let me know what you all think and what the possibilities are, thanks :)

Answer 1

I don't know of any alternative, but I didn't think Equinox Aspects was inactive. It's even receiving new features in the upcoming Helios release.

Answer 2

The big issue is obviously with the lack of standardized loadtime weaving; Equinox Aspects and the weaver (used by AJDT) has been the only option for now. The good news is that bytecode weaving in all its glory is actively in progress in the OSGi working group and will "soon" be standardized. If you really need something that works reliably right now, your best bet is still compile-time weaving. IMHO that is a much better approach anyway, at least for AOP as design-time activity as it was originally envisioned..

Answer 3

As an alternative, you could also consider using the Apache Felix Dependency Manager, which allows you to at runtime add interceptors to existing OSGi services. Of course this is in no way a full AOP replacement, but for some use cases it might be enough.

You can find more documentation and an example here:

http://felix.apache.org/site/apache-felix-dependency-manager-osgi-design-patterns.html