[ecf-dev] remote services with karaf

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

Some of you have probably been aware that for some time we have been 
creating features for install of remote services into Apache Karaf [1,2].

Increasingly, it seems that people are interested in using ECF remote 
services with Karaf [3].   Given the nature of remote services, this 
opens up lots of possibilities for developers...e.g. eclipse rcp 
consumers <-> karaf hosts, vice-versa, and karaf<->karaf remote services.

I've recently been working with Christian Schneider, who is one of the 
Karaf committers, to make it easier to learn about, try out, test, and 
use ECF remote services with Karaf.   What we've done so far is to get 
things working on both Karaf3 and 4 (recently released), and created a 
few 'minimal' features that just install the generic provider, jmdns and 
OSGi Remote Services.

Christian has also created a new example 'tasklist' remote service that 
we can use as an example/for tutorials.

Here are the 'minimal' Karaf features currently (they are still in flux):

Karaf 4 on jdk1.7 [4]
Karaf 4 on jdk1.8 [5]  <-  this supports j8 CompletableFuture for ECF 
async proxies

Our intention is to start with these minimal karaf features, and add 
features for all other distribution and discovery providers, similar to 
how we have separate features for providers in our p2 repos.

I would like to do this work in July, and include it in ECF 3.10.1 in 
August along with greater/more examples, tutorials, etc on using ECF 
remote services with Karaf3 and 4.

It would be great if other ECF committers or contributors participated 
in this effort for 3.10.1.  There are a number of things to do...e.g. 
create Karaf features for providers, test them, write tutorial, example, 
docs.   Ultimately it would be nice to generate karaf features from our 
build (e.g. via Tycho).

Please contact me via email slewis at composent.com if you are able to 
participate in this over the next 5 weeks.

Thanks,

Scott

[1] https://wiki.eclipse.org/EIG:Install_into_Apache_Karaf
[2] https://wiki.eclipse.org/EIG:Install_Timeline_Example_into_Apache_Karaf
[3] http://karaf.apache.org/
[4] 
http://download.eclipse.org/rt/ecf/3.10.0/site.p2/karaf4-min-features.xml
[5] 
http://download.eclipse.org/rt/ecf/3.10.0/site.p2/karaf4-j8-min-features.xml