Adrian Colyer <adrian.col...@springsource.com>

Some of you may have seen the recent announcement of the SpringSource  
Application Platform (if not, a good starting point is Rob Harrop's  
blog here: http://blog.springsource.com/main/2008/04/30/introducing-
the-springsource-application-platform/). The platform uses Spring and  
Spring Dynamic Modules as the end-user programming model, and  
contains a lot of smarts to make that model work smoothly with  
existing enterprise libraries.

Regardless of whether or not you choose to use the Platform,  
subscribers to this list will almost certainly be interested in the  
SpringSource Bundle Repository (http://www.springsource.com/
repository). To support the development of enterprise applications  
with OSGi we've created a repository with nearly 300 of the most  
commonly used enterprise libraries when developing Spring  
applications. (Yes, this was a big and very resource intensive  
undertaking!) Every bundle in the repository has full OSGi manifests,  
and before any artefact gets into the repository it is verified in a  
running OSGi Service Platform to ensure it loads and resolves correctly.

The repository meets the following criteria:

     * Every jar file in the repository is a valid OSGi bundle. Any  
jar you download from the repository can be deployed as-is into an  
OSGi Service Platform. It can also be used as a regular jar file  
outside of OSGi.
     * Every bundle and library has full version information  
associated with it. The package export information for a bundle  
contains version information, and the package import information for  
a bundle contains full version range compatibility information.
     * The repository is transitively complete. The mandatory  
dependencies of any bundle are guaranteed to also be in the  
repository. Most of the optional dependencies of any bundle in the  
repository will also be present. The bundles listed in any library  
definition are guaranteed to be in the repository.
     * The repository is self-consistent. Before any artefact is  
uploaded to the repository, we verify that it can be installed,  
resolved, and started in an OSGi Service Platform (using the same  
profile as the SpringSource Application Platform) alongside all of  
the other bundles in the repository.
     * The repository can be used from Ivy and Maven based builds.

There is an FAQ here for those who are interested in further details  
http://www.springsource.com/repository/app/faq

Regards, Adrian.

Adrian Colyer
CTO, SpringSource
http://www.springsource.com

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