Hi,

I have a project that references a number of open source libraries, some new, some not so new. That said, they are all stable and I wish to stick with my chosen versions until I have time to migrate to the newer versions (I tested hsqldb 2.0 yesterday and it contains many api changes).

One of the libraries I have wish to embed is Jasper Reports, but as you all surely know, it comes with a mountain of supporting jar files and I have only need a subset of the mountain (known) therefore I am planning to custom bundle all of my dependant libraries.

So:

• Does everyone custom-make their own OSGi bundles for open-source libraries they are using or is there a master source of OSGi versions of common libraries?

• Also, I was thinking that it would be far simpler for each of my bundles simply to embed their dependent jars within the bundle itself. Is this possible? If I choose to embed the 3rd party foc libraries within a bundle, I assume I will need to produce 2 jar files, one without the embedded libraries (for libraries to be loaded via the classpath via standard classloader), and one osgi version that includes the embedded libraryy, therefore should I choose a bundle name like this <<myprojectname>>-<<subproject>>-osgi-.1.0.0.jar ?

• If I cannot embed the open source libraries and choose to custom bundle the open source libraries (via bnd), should I choose a unique bundle name to avoid conflict with a possible official bundle? e.g. <<myprojectname>>-<<3rdpartylibname>>-<<3rdpartylibversion>>.jar ?

• My non-OSGi enabled project currently scans for custom plugins via scanning the META-INF folders in my various plugin jars via Service.providers(...). If I go OSGi, will this mechanism still work?