How to programmatically/ automatically run OSGi applications

Question

When creating Java OSGi projects in eclipse, you run them by .bndrun-> Run OSGi (for example)

This does not seem to be really workable when you want to distribute your application to a client, since it would be an inconvenience for them to go about having to manually run the bundles in an OSGi container.

Is there a way I could have a "main" jar\ bundle with a public static void main(String[] args) {} class that automatically starts an OSGi container and loads the bundles, as if it was all in one jar file, when a user runs this file?

Answer 1

See the OSGi enRoute site. The Quick Start tutorial and the Base tutorial explain how to export to an executable JAR. If you use Maven, see the Eval example.

Answer 2

You can simply use the export button in bndtools. It creates a runnable jar that you can distribute.

Bndtools also supports an automated build using gradle.

Recently bndtools also has maven support see this example.