How do I start a specific bundle in my own OSGi application deployed in WAS 8.0?

Question

I have quite a sophisticated OSGi application which uses Declarative Services and was designed to be deployed in Equinox. Now the task is to make this application be deployable in WAS 8.

The first try was quite pragmatic: I have deployed an EAR which has started basically the same Equinox and after some WAS class loading policy tweaks it has worked.

Now I want to go further: get rid of the Equinox runtime and deploy my bundles "natively" in WAS 8. So I have composed an EBA, consisting out of my business bundles, their dependencies and Equinox DS runtime. The EBA is deployed as an asset and integrated into a BLA. The application has even started and runs but the components are not initialized.

The point is that one has to start equinox.ds in front of the own business bundles (UPDATE: not a must, s. discussion below) in order to make DS do its job. But how do I tell the bundles which is to be started first within the deployed EBA? I need some analog of Equinox' config.ini file.

I know I can rewire my components with natively supported Blueprint, but frankly this is the last thing I'd like to do. It should be possible to make Equinox DS work, shouldn't it?

Another question is: how to get the OSGi console for one's own application deployed under WAS 8? I want to control my bundles but seems that there is no way to do it from the Management Console.

UPDATE

Thanks to BJ and Neil (s. discussion below), the question takes down to "How do I start a specific bundle in my own OSGi application deployed in WAS 8.0?"

Answer 1

To answer the OSGi console part of your question, a normal OSGi console won't work because the OSGi applications are managed in nested frameworks. WebSphere provides its own console which can navigate the nested applications: http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v8r0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.websphere.osgi.nd.multiplatform.doc%2Ftopics%2Fta_admin_runtime_console.html