Is it possible to save my OSGi project (which comprises of few bundles) to a single executable file, something like an .exe file , so I can copy and run it to any PC that has a JVM. I know that the normal method is to open a command prompt and install the required bundles/ jar files one by one. But since my project contains quite a few bundles that method seems tedious.
Thanx in Advance.
You can definitely do better than installing bundles one by one, even if you don't get as far as a single 'natively executable' archive like a .exe. There are lots of commercial and open source OSGi applications which ship as zip archives; the user unzips the archive and then either calls java -jar some.osgi.jar or runs a shell script.
There are a few ways the OSGi runtime can work out what bundles to install. Some are specific to an OSGi framework (such as Equinox or Felix) and others are more generic. If you're using Equinox, you can create a config.ini file and put it in a folder called configuration as the same level as your OSGi jar. List any bundles you want to start in the osgi.bundles property. The config.ini file can list all the bundles to start, and also any other configuration properties you might need.
Eclipse also allows you to define a minimal set of bundles in config.ini and use the configurator to start everything in the plugins folder. Similarly, if you're using Felix, any bundles in the auto-deploy directory will be automatically started. You could also look at Felix File Install, which allows you to drop bundles into a monitored folder to install them (once FileInstall itself is installed). Despite the name, FileInstall works on both Equinox and Felix.
This is similar to creating a complete OSGi application with Felix & Maven - the Sling Launchpad Plugin can be used to create an executable jar or war file that contains a specific set of bundles. If you're not using Maven yet it's not as simple as "saving your project to an executable file" but you could probably adapt the jar file generation mechanisms to your environment.
Eclipse has the notion of products. You could create a product from your existing bundles, and then your product can be exported as an executable. For details about the product see the Eclipse RCP tutorial from http://www.vogella.com/articles/EclipseRCP/article.html
The tutorial introduces the Eclipse RCP applications, but you do not need everything from there - it is possible to create a product without creating an entire Eclipse application.
This limits your choices as you are more or less bound to Eclipse Equinox as your OSGi runtime, but for creating an executable product from it might be a workable tradeoff.
Thanx. Following the answers above I came across Chapter 9 in this book. http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780321561510/ch09#ch09 It had a walk through tutorial in exporting the project through the product configuration. Its exactly what I needed. :)
If you use bnd(tools) then you can export a project to an executable jar either from the bndtools GUI or via the bnd commandline (bnd package xyz.bndrun; java -jar xyz.jar). The resulting jar file contains all the bundles, the launcher, and the framework.
