title: Setting osgi.configuration.area breaks my Equinox OSGI app
body: <p>I have an application which uses Equinox as an osgi framework for a while now. Until now I used the system property osgi.install.area to specify where my bundles are like so</p>
  
  <pre><code>${osgi.install.area}/
    plugins/
       org.eclipse.osgi_3.7.0.v20110613.jar
       ... my app bundles
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Equinox then automatically uses <code>${osgi.install.area}/configuration</code> as the configuration area.</p>
  
  <p>Everything works fine. </p>
  
  <p>Now I need to move the configuration area out of <code>${osgi.install.area}</code> because that may be read-only and I thought it was as simple as setting <code>${osgi.configuration.area}</code> to a suitable path but when I do this the application no longer starts and I have the following stack trace in the logs:</p>
  
  <pre><code>java.lang.IllegalStateException: Unable to acquire application service. Ensure that the org.eclipse.core.runtime bundle is resolved and started (see config.ini).
      at org.eclipse.core.runtime.internal.adaptor.EclipseAppLauncher.start(EclipseAppLauncher.java:74)
      at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:344)
      at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.run(EclipseStarter.java:179)
      at org.eclipse.core.runtime.adaptor.EclipseStarter.main(EclipseStarter.java:150)
  ...  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The path is used because at that location the log file is created and a directory <code>"org.eclipse.osgi"</code>.</p>
  
  <p>Paths to bundles are referenced in my <code>config.ini</code> like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>osgi.bundles=de.mycomp.app-0.6.0.20121116-1834.jar@start, ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The error message does not really give a hint where to look. It must be something rather simple but I am rather clueless at the moment.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance,</p>
  
  <p>Robert</p>