It must have been beginning of 2008 or even earlier that Peter Kriens (Technical Director of the OSGi Alliance) has first pitched the idea of gathering some of the expert groups members together for a week of intensive collaboration. At the time, the idea became more and more appealing as we were fantasising about sitting next to the pool in southern France while drinking wine and philosophizing about OSGi. I kind of signed up immediately, not knowing whether I would actually be able to attend.
Now, in October 2008, we actually did meet in Montpellier, France. The hotel 'La Grande Motte' was chosen by Peter as the hosting location and turns out to be an excellent ambiente for this kind of collaboration. We gathered in a small room near the waterfront for 9 to 10 hours a day, only breaking for coffee and lunch every once in a while. Actually, we took our breaks very seriously :-) The food was delicious French cuisine with appetizers and dessert. I probably gained a few pounds during this week.
Work wise, we focused on the most pressing outstanding action items like the OSGi build, their test cases, and of course, my child, RFC 119 - Distributed OSGi. Having David and his colleagues as well as my former Siemens colleagues together in the same room at the same time was very helpful. Siemens committed their RI for the Discovery part and I completed the TCK within the first 2 days. In the meantime, David assembled all of the CXF based RI into a single bundle to make it usable from the OSGi build. I was not able to complete the full TCK, but pretty much everything is there to finish it alone at home in Palo Alto.
We had some very interesting and controversial discussions:
If the RFC claims that it provides for distribution of OSGi services, does the TCK need to verify this claim by deploying at least 2 separate JVMs?
Peter and I argued that it is sufficient test the contract only in a single JVM, the distributon is part of the implementation, which would need to have its own system tests.
Pretty much the rest of the group was arguing for a more business oriented view, in which a RI should actually provide value. Companies providing the RIs made a sigificant investment into the development and the RI should be more than an academic excercise.
I guess we will have to continue this discussion over time.
Well, I think this meeting was a huge success and should be repeated next year, maybe twice a year as suggested by a few attendees.
As you were...
