What IDE settings and workflow are used to develop OSGi?

Question

I have done quite a few simple OSGi test projects in Eclipse RCP. My typical workflow will always be:

• Make 3 different projects: APIproject, Clientproject, and Serverproject.
• Edit the MANIFEST.MF API project to export the api package
• Edit the MANIFEST.MF Clientproject and Serverproject file to add the required API package.
• Choose Run From ...> Plugin Structure
• OSGi console launches in an eclipse and everything seems to work

I also tried connecting things using Declarative Services, which also worked well.

I recently wanted to try iPOJO. The problem is that I get the feeling that I'm not doing my OSGi development correctly.
Maybe I should do 1 project so that it works like no OSGi. And then, just export each package to your own package using (for example) the BNDL tool? Should a normal Eclipse (java, not RCP) or any other Java environment evolve?

So why do I have the following questions:

• What IDE setup is commonly used to develop OSGi with iPOJO?
• And what is the normal workflow that will be used when developing OSGi projects (possibly with iPOJO)?

Answer 1

Usually, when I develop OSGi packages (not Eclipse RCP), I use the following tools:

• Maven 2 as a build system.
• Apache Felix maven-bundle-plugin to automatically create MANIFEST.MF.
• Pax Exam for creating integration tests that run inside an OSGi container.
• Pax Runner to run my packages on any OSGi environment (equinox, felix, etc.).
• IntelliJ (or sometimes Eclipse) as a standard IDE without any additional OSGi features.

I have not developed Eclipse RPC packages yet, but there is a new tool for integrating the Maven 6 Eclipse RPC assembly called Tycho ( http://tycho.sonatype.org ).