Hooking into the Equinox Framework
Thomas Watson (IBM )
Making For Eclipse · Lightning (12 mins)
Monday, 15:20, 12 minutes | Lafayette
Tags: OSGi DevCon , Runtime
The Equinox OSGi Framework is a powerful platform that provides the base for the Eclipse runtime platform. Eclipse is all about adding extensions, and the Equinox OSGi framework follows the same paradigm. It has been been designed fully with extensibility in mind allowing the installation of adaptor hooks to augment the framework with additional function.
Adaptor hooks can be used to do many powerful things. For example, adaptor hooks can be used to change how classes and resources are loaded, how bundles are stored on disk, provide additional diagnostics etc. Eclipse plugs into Equinox using this very same mechanism, and anyone can easily specify their own adaptor to compliment, improve, or even completely replace the default Equinox hook implementations. This short talk demonstrate an example framework extension that adds the ability to patch a host bundle.
Thomas co-leads the Equinox Project at Eclipse and is a member of the Eclipse Runtime PMC. Thomas has 10 years of experience as an IBM software architect and developer, and is currently working for IBM Lotus. Thomas's focus is on modularity and the OSGi Framework design and development. He is the lead developer for the Equinox OSGi Framework implementation in Eclipse.
Thomas has been involved in the development of OSGi technologies since 2002 and played a key role in the adoption of OSGi technologies by the Eclipse platform. He is currently a member of the OSGi Core Platform Expert Group (CPEG) and made significant contributions to the OSGi Release 4 specifications.