SpringSource on Thursday is introducing a repository of OSGi libraries intended to lower barriers to modular application development based on OSGi and Java.
The company is unveiling the free SpringSource Enterprise Bundle Repository, hosted online by Amazon EC2 and S3 services. The repository contains more than 400 of the most popular open source, enterprise Java libraries for general use in an OSGi-ready format, SpringSource said. Artifacts can be deployed in an OSGi environment such as SpringSource’s own dm Server, a Java server built on OSGi.
Developers have access to OSGi-ready libraries and are freed from searching for third-party code. “If you’re working with OSGi, to get [the] full potential of OSGi modularization you need to need to have the libraries that you use packaged with OSGi metadata packaged as OSGi bundles,” said Rod Johnson, SpringSource CEO.
OSGi is a technology that can be used to modularize infrastructure and applications, Johnson said. This is important because it helps reduce the footprint of infrastructure so, for example, an application can have a faster startup time, he said. Also with OSGi, infrastructure can work better in a virtualized environment, Johnson said.
The Eclipse Foundation has used OSGi as the basis for its Eclipse plug-in model to extend the popular Eclipse IDE. “SpringSource is [attempting] to unleash the power of OSGi to enterprise Java, really, in the same way that Eclipse did on the desktop,” Johnson said.
The repository includes data on dependencies between the libraries.
Artifacts in the repository are accessible via a Web interface and the Maven and Ivy build tools. Access also is integrated into the SpringSource Tool Suite.
To protect published artifacts, SpringSource applies a governance model to the repository content to ensure that metadata is correct and consistent through the repository, the company said.
While all libraries are open source at the moment, the repository may be expanded to include non-open source software, Johnson said.
The repository is available at this Web page.