Gitpod: Support bnd

[pkriens]

Would it be possible to support bnd & OSGi? Currently your Java environment does not have a classpath. I am the owner of the bnd project and am willing to do the work if you can provide guidance. I see you use visual code? Is it sufficient to add bnd to VC?

https://github.com/bndtools

Looking forward to your feedback.

[corneliusludmann]

Thanks for your interest and for offering your help.

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what you mean. But I am sure we can figure that out together.

At first, we do not use VSCode, Gitpod ist based on Theia. However, Theia supports VSCode extensions. Gitpod supports Java as well as Maven / Gradle out of the box. You could find more information in the docs.

I randomly picked an example OSGi / bnd project from GitHub and opened it in Gitpod: https://gitpod.io/#https://github.com/vorburger/osgi-bnd-maven-example

In this project I had to change the Java version like this:

$ sdk install java 8.0.242-open

After this I was able to run the test.sh script that runs Gradle as well as Maven. The build finished successfully.

To get language support for bnd and MANIFEST.MF files I installed a VSCode extension. I opened the repository in Gitpod, ran yarn && npx vsce package, downloaded the *.vsix file and installed the extension in my Gitpod workspace (drag-and-drop).

Would it be possible to support bnd & OSGi?

What kind of support are you thinking of? Maybe you has an example that you can share?

Currently your Java environment does not have a classpath.

What do you mean with this?

Don't hesitate to ask if you have further questions.

[pkriens]

Thanks for the extensive answer. I'll take look at Theia and will come back after I understand what the implications are.

[corneliusludmann]

I'll close the issue for now. Feel free to open it again if desired.

[jankeromnes]

Cc @vorburger and @sandared who may know better about OSGi and/or bnd in Gitpod 😇

Also, this tutorial about using Java in Gitpod may be helpful here: https://www.gitpod.io/docs/languages/java/

[Sandared]

@pkriens when you say supporting bnd/OSGi then do you mean something like bndTools just for Theia/VSCode (which would be awesome btw! 😁) or do you mean altering the classpath at development time, so that I immediately am warned (compiler error) )when I for example try to access types within a private package?

I am currently using GitPod to develop our OSGi based application. Currently we are using Maven, so we have support during the build by bnd, but it would be great to have an immediate feedback about the OSGi classpath like we have in Eclipse