Great comment dick - would you put it on your blog so others could link to it for discussion?
On Mar 27, 10:48 am, Dick Wall <dickw...@gmail.com> wrote: > Attending EclipseCon yesterday and talking to Peter Kriens and BJ > Hargrave forced me to finally take in some of the information about > OSGi, and I thought I would share some of my thoughts on this handy > thread. There may be some hard statements here, firm but fair > hopefully. > > Firstly, I really didn't want to care about the modularisation > mechanism, I just wanted to have the benefits, but it appears that > care I must. > > So I learned about OSGi. It looks like it does what it does very well, > but one theme running throughout the day was the complexity. LinkedIn > made a point of mentioning it in their talk, and even strong advocates > seem to admit it could be simpler. Note that the complexity is not a > function of the manifests (although they do repeat information which > is less than ideal), but mainly appears to be through the required > pervasiveness of OSGi throughout everything you do (all third party > libs, etc.). > > My own take is that while I understand the problem domain is a > difficult one, so is Java persistence, and yet we now have JPA, which > is a fine API that takes only a few hours to learn the basics and > start using in Java applications, surely the same could be true for > Java modularization. > > Being forced to finally learn about OSGi, I looked for areas where it > would help me - working in a fairly representative job with a medium > sized web site and back office management interface, as well as some > pretty neat calculation stuff. > > It occurs to me that the biggest benefit of modularization in my case > would be to bring down build time and increase developer productivity. > For our situation the ability to hot-swap modules in live systems is > not compelling - like (I suspect) many companies, we test release > candidates and then swap the final result onto a website - with > curtains down for a couple of minutes if necessary, I understand this > is not true for everyone, but making life more difficult for all > developers on the premise of "you might one day want to do this > obscure thing" is responsible for bringing us EJB 2.x. > > So - given the idea that my war files could be made smaller and much > faster to build and deploy, is that a compelling argument for OSGi. I > would have to say, not in it's current form. The amount of work > required to make bundles out of everything we depend on, and > reorganize our build into a set of OSGi modules just to get the war > sizes down, is completely out of line with the benefits it would bring > us. > > I believe the same will be true for a lot of smaller/medium sized > companies. > > I understand Neil's concerns about fragmentation, but on the other > hand a standard should not be kept just because it is a standard > (otherwise we would have never had Spring, and EJB 3.x would have > probably been even more complicated than EJB 2.x). > > To go further, it seems to me that the best way to ensure the > dominance of a standard is to make it a really good standard. Spring > shows what is possible when a good third party alternative goes up > against what is in the "standards" offerings, and that (along with > Ruby on Rails) drove a lot of positive change in the industry. > > The first step for, say, my (or our) adoption of OSGi would be to > bring down the price of admission significantly and make it worthwhile > for a small company like us to get the benefits more easily. Reducing > complexity and agreeing with other projects that handle dependencies > would be a good start, as would taking advantage of language keywords > and annotations. We should have learned by now that DRY is a good > idea, so why do I have import statements in Java source, dependency > definitions in OSGi and then again in Maven. That sort of stuff should > be kept in one place (the source), with enough pressure relief to > allow exceptional cases (like XML configuration overrides in JPA that > are only used when needed). > > In other words, let's use OSGi because it is the best, quickest and > easiest project out there, not because it is an entrenched standard. > If enough people think it is too hard or costly to use, don't we owe > it to ourselves to adopt something better? If fear of fragmentation is > what drives improvement of OSGi then great, it will only be better > from the effort. > > Cheers > > Dick > > On Mar 26, 2:22 pm, Reinier Zwitserloot <reini...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > OSGi, like any other programming language/library/whatever, has a > > community associated with it. Such a community has a certain > > reputation; its only natural for communities to develop certain quirks > > and groupthink. It is perfectly acceptable to take the community into > > account when choosing one library over another. > > > The groupthink of OSGi is to whine incessantly about the evil sun. > > It's one of the main reasons why I don't like OSGi. > > > You are certainly not the only loudmouth. 3 out of every 4 blogs I > > read that praise the virtues of OSGi actually just give me a thousand > > mile overview in one paragraph then spend the next 4 beating on sun. > > Trust me, that is not the right strategy for convincing non-believers > > to join your side. > > > On Mar 26, 6:35 pm, Neil Bartlett <njbartl...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Reinier, > > > > It's a shame you choose to see it that way. You know, if Sun had > > > admitted Java had a modularity problem 10 years ago then OSGi would > > > not have been necessary. Today OSGi is the standard, Jigsaw is way too > > > late and stands in opposition to the rest of the industry. > > > > I really don't want to whip Sun either. Like the curate's egg, most of > > > Sun is excellent and I feel they should not be throwing away goodwill > > > on this issue. > > > > Finally, "OSGi Advocates" are not an aggregated mass. I am a single > > > opinionated loudmouth. Hating other OSGi advocates for what I say is > > > just stupid. > > > > Regards, > > > Neil > > > > On Mar 26, 4:40 pm, Reinier Zwitserloot <reini...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > I'd like to 'me-too' Romain Guy and say that OSGi advocates annoy me. > > > > There it is, OSGi advocates. Do with this information what you wish. > > > > Just know that whipping on any attempt of Sun to join the > > > > modularization game is exactly what makes people want to hand you some > > > > valium, so - spectacularly- well done on proving Romain Guy's point. > > > > > I don't like jigsaw's sparse technical documentation either, but I do > > > > know that having a 'module' keyword is fantastic, and having a sun > > > > java installer that is modularized is similarly fantastic. > > > > > On Mar 26, 1:50 pm, Weiqi Gao <weiqi...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > Neil Bartlett wrote: > > > > > > Romain, it's not like that at all. I believe there will be huge > > > > > > damage > > > > > > to the Java ecosystem from having multiple competing module systems. > > > > > > You want to write a module, which module system do you support? It's > > > > > > as bad as what Microsoft tried to do to Java. > > > > > > > If you don't want to use OSGi I really really don't mind. If you > > > > > > want > > > > > > to fracture the Java platform, I mind a lot. > > > > > > It seems to me that OSGi is the fracturing force. So could OSGi > > > > > please > > > > > just go away? > > > > > > I have nothing against OSGi and the above paragraph is merely to > > > > > illustrate a point. The point is that fracturing is inevitable. The > > > > > sooner the vendors start to thinks of ways to make their pet > > > > > mechanisms > > > > > work together for their customers the better. > > > > > > Just because some one invented OSGi twenty years ago doesn't mean > > > > > others > > > > > can't invent something similar to counter it. Think IE vs. Netscape, > > > > > C# > > > > > vs. Java, Eclipse vs. NetBeans, SWT vs Swing, Ruby vs. Smalltalk and > > > > > Perl, Gcj vs. Harmony vs. the JDK, Scala vs. Erlang, JavaFX vs. Flex > > > > > vs. > > > > > Silverlight, java.util.logging vs. Log4j, SOAP vs. CORBA, etc. The > > > > > list > > > > > goes on and on. And all the UNIXes. And all the Linux distributions. > > > > > And Windows vs. the Mac. And the GPL vs. the Apache License. > > > > > > Fracture leads to variety and variety leads to survival. > > > > > > Trying to get the whole world to use only one mechanism is not going > > > > > to > > > > > work. > > > > > > Had Sun allowed Java to fracture a little on Windows, we would be > > > > > writing Windows applications in Java rather than in C#. > > > > > > Had Sun not allowed Java to be implemented elsewhere and in > > > > > non-conforming ways, we would be writing Android applications in some > > > > > other language. PHP perhaps. I don't know. > > > > > > > On Mar 26, 8:12 am, Romain Guy <romain....@mac.com> wrote: > > > > > >> Technical merits aside, the OSGi advocates are really starting to > > > > > >> piss > > > > > >> me off. They go rant against anything that is even remotely like > > > > > >> OSGi > > > > > >> and they go rant against anything that doesn't use OSGi and could > > > > > >> perhaps potentially use it. This is *not* a good way to advocate a > > > > > >> technology. > > > > > > >> On Mar 25, 5:37 pm, JodaStephen <jodastep...@googlemail.com> wrote: > > > > > > >>> Joshua Marinacci said > > > > > >>> "Jigsaw is the modularity planned to be built into the JDK. It's > > > > > >>> purpose in life is to make the JRE modular. No other modules > > > > > >>> system, > > > > > >>> including OSGI, has the ability to do that because they simply > > > > > >>> can't > > > > > >>> work at a low enough level to make things work (such as JVM > > > > > >>> changes). > > > > > >>> Of course that conveniently ignores Apache Harmony, which is a JDK > > > > > >>> modularised using OSGi. I think you'll find there are some deeper > > > > > >>> forces going on here. > > > > > >>> phil.swenson said: > > > > > >>> "jigsaw is core to Java 7 isn't it?" > > > > > >>> No. Jigsaw is core to JDK7, not Java7. Huge difference. > > > > > >>> Stephen > > > > > > -- > > > > > Weiqi Gao > > > > > weiqi...@gmail.comhttp://www.weiqigao.com/blog/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
