Equinox and Google Summer of Code

An implementation of an OSGi resolver is a complex beast. Just ask Tom Watson, the Equinox dev lead :-) The Equinox p2 project, a new provisioning system for Eclipse, also has similar and complex resolve algorithm. Recently the p2 project, changed to use the SAT4J SAT solver to drive their resolve algorithm.

We have proposed a Google Summer of Code project for someone to investigate replacing the current Equinox runtime resolver with SAT4J (or another suitable constraint solver). So if this project sounds interesting to you, please sign up for it!

OSGi and eRCP on Mobile Phones

Sprint (a US mobile operator) has a new OSGi based mobile phone platform called Titan. There was a session at EclipseCon announcing this. But if you missed the session at EclipseCon and want to learn more, there is a webcast on Wednesday March 26 at 1pm EDT.

Call for Speakers at 2008 OSGi Community Event

The OSGi Alliance is holding the 2008 OSGi Community Event June 10-11 in Berlin, Germany. The Call for Speakers was just issued. Please consider submitting a session proposal and attending the Community Event. I hope to see you there.

EclipseCon is over and a MacBook Pro for me!

Another great EclipseCon is over. The OSGi DevCon portion of EclipseCon had a great set of sessions this year. Kudos to Peter Kriens for another great job as OSGi DevCon program chair! This is the third year that OSGi has been featured at EclipseCon. The first year we spent a lot of time educating people on what OSGi was. The second year more people knew about OSGi but there was still more educating to do. This year was different. Everyone knew about OSGi. I kept overhearing people mention OSGi in conversations. There were many presentation not in the OSGi DevCon track of which OSGi was a topic. I am thrilled! Now the focus can move from teaching people about what OSGi is to how best to use OSGi. And the new Eclipse Runtime top-level project and Equinox portal are great news as well.

It was a long and busy trip for me. We had OSGi expert group meetings (hosted by Siemens in San Jose) the Thur/Fri before EclipseCon. Then we had four days of EclipseCon where I was involved in 5 presentations. Just to make things even more exciting, my trusty laptop decided to stop cooperating. It began to hang almost every time I closed it (during suspend). I don't know what the cause was. I can only imagine it was suffering from the entropy and decay that seems to happen to Windows systems over time. I defragged the hard disk, I deleted a boatload of programs. Nothing seemed to really help. And then just before my final presentation, it hung again and this time would not reboot. Fortunately, I had a copy of my charts on a USB flash drive and presented from that using a borrowed laptop. I was finally able to get the laptop booting again after running chkdsk for 2.5 hours in the airport between flights. But I have no idea if/when it will hang again (sigh).

During EclipseCon I could not help but notice how many people had MacBooks this year. I feel like almost half of the attendees did. (iPhone penetration was pretty deep too!). Peter Kriens got a MacBook recently as well. After watching him and Neil Bartlett use their MacBooks, I was very impressed with MacOS X. And then my own windows problems with my laptop pushed me over the edge. I just ordered a new 15" MacBook Pro. I almost feel guilty now for calling Peter an Apple fan boy... :-)