Chapter 1. OSGi, Equinox, and Eclipse

As this book goes to press, both OSGi and Eclipse are celebrating their tenth birthdays as Java technologies. Though they were developed independently in completely different domains, their lineage can be traced back to teams in the same organization with a similar need to provide componentized Java solutions. In the case of OSGi it was home gateways and set-top boxes. For Eclipse, that need was in the tooling space. Both, however, had very similar needs for modularity and extensibility.

In this first chapter of a book dedicated to OSGi and Equinox, we look at some of the history behind these technologies, how they are used, what they are good for, and what they can do for you.

1.1 A Bit of History

For ...

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