Saturday, September 19, 2009

Eclipse 3.6 M2 is out - and includes Equinox Weaving

The second milestone of Eclipse 3.6 is available for download - and its the first milestone build that includes the Equinox Weaving feature as part of the Equinox 3.6 M2 downloads.

After graduating the Equinox Aspects work we renamed it to Equinox Weaving. The reason for this is: The design separates between the base mechanism of modifying bytecode at class loading time and the actual bytecode modification. The AspectJ-based aspect weaving for bundles is just one of many possible bytecode modifiers you can think of. Another one that we implemented (but is not yet part of the Equinox Weaving project) allows you to use Springs load-time weaving infrastructure on top of a OSGi runtime together with Spring Dynamic Modules. And the nice thing about it is: While you are free to choose whatever weaver you like, the caching mechanism of Equinox Weaving works independent from all those weavers.

We still need to update the Equinox web to reflect the graduation and design changes of Equinox Weaving, but please feel free to take a look at it. We are happy to answer questions on the newsgroup and the mailing list.

Enjoy!

6 comments:

Shyam said...

Hello,

When will the Spring bridge become part of the weaving project? We are very eager to use this. Our project uses standalone Equinox and Spring DM, also Spring AOP. We'd like to get Spring to use this Equinox LTW.

Martin Lippert said...

Hi Shyam,

I haven't decided or even discussed the future of the Spring bridge for Equinox Weaving at the moment. Putting it in Equinox sounds strange since it heavily depends on Spring, putting it into Spring sounds strange as well, since it heavily depends on Equinox Weaving... ;-) I will discuss this with the Equinox team to see what is possible and feasible.

so long you can just use it from where you have it, eh? Or do you have a problem with its current download location?

Cheers,
-Martin

Eric Jain said...

One year later, and the Equinox Aspects site still makes no mention of "Equinox Weaving", and moreover looks a bit like one of the many abandoned/languishing Eclipse projects... Is there a new site with updated documentation?

Martin Lippert said...

Hi Eric,

you are right, the equinox aspects website is quite old and outdated, I just haven't found the time to update it during the past months. Nevertheless the code base that is part of the Equinox build is quite stable and ready to use. But I definitely have to update the website and I promise to do within the next weeks.

Cheers,
-Martin

Eric Jain said...

What's the best place to ask questions about Equinox Weaving? Is there a mailing list or newsgroup? Not having much luck with the Equinox newsgroup...

Martin Lippert said...

Hey Eric!

I think the newsgroup is a good place to start (I just forgot to look through over the past weeks, sorry for that). If you don't get a reaction to it, you could also try equinox-dev or aspectj-users for your questions.

HTH,
Martin