Add simple BND task to OSGi plugin

Currently, we have to include the bnd jar, run it as a JavaExec task, then manually include osgi’d jars in the configuration. It would be great if the OSGi plugin would support manually running BND on a local jar, rather than tying it purely to project manifest generation.

If there’s any interest, I’d be happy to contribute (with a bit of direction).

Hi Brett,

Would you mind explaining a little bit more about what kind of workflows this would be useful for?

Admittedly, the context was somewhat unique, but I’m guessing it comes up in others ways. We just finished up Hibernate OSGi and included unit/integration tests. Hibernate has multiple dependencies that are not OSGi-friendly. Most OSGi containers will allow you to “wrap:” the bundle when you activate it, which simply uses BND to automatically update the manifest. However, the few unit test environment frameworks we worked with (Arquillian and PAX-Exam) do not provide this capability. So, BND needs to be manually run on a few local, controlled jars prior to the test task. It’s also useful when you need to provide .bnd files to tightly control the packages, import/export versions, etc.

Here’s the specific example. See the *Bnd tasks.

That makes sense.

Would this be something you would be interested in contributing to the plugin?

Certainly, but may need a bit of direction. Is anyone available to discuss it? IRC? Email?

Can we open a JIRA for this and I’ll take a stab at it?