How to embed a library JAR in an OSGi bundle using Tycho

Question

I am using Maven with the Tycho plugin to build my OSGi bundles. In one of my bundles, I use the facebook API through the restfb-1.7.0.jar library.

For now, it is directly placed on the classpath (in Eclipse) and embedded in the effective OSGi bundle jar file with following build.properties configuration:

source.. = src/
output.. = bin/
bin.includes = META-INF/,\
           .,\
           lib/restfb-1.7.0.jar

Now I would like to have this restfb lib downloaded from Maven (e.g. as dependency) and embedded into my OSGi bundle jar. Is it possible with Maven/Tycho? How?

Answer 1

You need the following configuration to embed a JAR into an OSGi plugin with Tycho:

1. In the pom.xml, configure the copy goal of the maven-dependency-plugin

   <build>
       <plugins>
           <plugin>
               <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
               <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
               <version>2.10</version>
               <executions>
                   <execution>
                       <id>copy-libraries</id>
                       <phase>validate</phase>
                       <goals>
                           <goal>copy</goal>
                       </goals>
                       <configuration>
                           <artifactItems>
                               <item>
                                   <groupId>com.restfb</groupId>
                                   <artifactId>restfb</artifactId>
                                   <version>1.7.0</version>
                               </item>
                           </artifactItems>
                           <outputDirectory>lib</outputDirectory>
                           <stripVersion>true</stripVersion>
                           <overWriteReleases>true</overWriteReleases>
                           <overWriteSnapshots>true</overWriteSnapshots>
                       </configuration>
                   </execution>
               </executions>
           </plugin>
       </plugins>
   </build>
   

2. Edit the MANIFEST.MF to have the library added to the OSGi bundle classpath

   Bundle-ClassPath: ., lib/restfb.jar
   

3. Edit the build.properties to have the library included in the JAR packaged by Tycho

   bin.includes = META-INF/,\
                  .,\
                  lib/restfb.jar