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<h1><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation"></a>Apache Felix Usage Documentation</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-startingfelix" title="starting-felix on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">Starting Felix</a></li>
<li><a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-felixshell" title="felix-shell on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">Felix Shell</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-installingbundles" title="installing-bundles on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">Installing Bundles</a></li>
<li><a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-installingbundlesproxies" title="installing-bundles-proxies on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">Web Proxy Issues when Installing Bundles</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-configuringfelix" title="configuring-felix on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">Configuring Felix</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-propertysubstitution" title="property-substitution on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">System Property Substitution</a></li>
<li><a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-defaultshell" title="default-shell on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">Changing the Command Shell User Interface</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-configuringbundles" title="configuring-bundles on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">Configuring Bundles</a></li>
<li><a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-feedback" title="feedback on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">Feedback</a></li>
</ul>
<p><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-startingfelix"></a></p>
<h2><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-StartingFelix"></a>Starting Felix</h2>
<p>Start Felix from the installation directory by typing:</p>
<div class="preformatted"><div class="preformattedContent">
<pre>java -jar bin/felix.jar
</pre>
</div></div>
<p>After executing the above command, you will be prompted to enter a
profile name; a profile is a simple way to organize sets of installed
bundles and any arbitrary name will suffice. Entering the same profile
name for subsequent executions of Felix will restore the installed
bundles associated with that profile. By default, Felix creates a
directory, called <tt>.felix</tt>, in your home directory and inside
of this directory Felix creates a separate sub-directory for each
profile; this behavior is configurable, see the <a href="http://cwiki.apache.org/FELIX/apache-felix-bundle-cache.html" title="Apache Felix Bundle Cache">Apache Felix Bundle Cache</a>
document for more details. After you have specified a profile name, the
text-based shell interface is started. It is possible to <a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-defaultshell" title="default-shell on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">change your default shell user interface</a>.</p>
<p><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-felixshell"></a></p>
<h2><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-FelixShell"></a>Felix Shell</h2>
<p>The main way to interact with Felix is via its shell service. Felix'
shell service is implemented as an OSGi service that, be default, uses
a simple text-based user interface. After starting Felix, type <tt>help</tt> into the shell to see the list of the available commands; these are the default commands:</p>
<div class="preformatted"><div class="preformattedContent">
<pre>bundlelevel &lt;level&gt; &lt;id&gt; ... | &lt;id&gt; - set or get bundle start level.
cd [&lt;base-URL&gt;] - change or display base URL.
headers [&lt;id&gt; ...] - display bundle header properties.
help - display shell commands.
install &lt;URL&gt; [&lt;URL&gt; ...] - install bundle(s).
obr help - OSGi bundle repository.
packages [&lt;id&gt; ...] - list exported packages.
ps [-l | -u] - list installed bundles.
refresh - refresh packages.
services [-u] [-a] [&lt;id&gt; ...] - list registered or used services.
shutdown - shutdown Felix.
start &lt;id&gt; [&lt;id&gt; &lt;URL&gt; ...] - start bundle(s).
startlevel [&lt;level&gt;] - get or set framework start level.
stop &lt;id&gt; [&lt;id&gt; ...] - stop bundle(s).
uninstall &lt;id&gt; [&lt;id&gt; ...] - uninstall bundle(s).
update &lt;id&gt; [&lt;URL&gt;] - update bundle.
version - display version of framework.
</pre>
</div></div>
<p>For a detailed description of how to install bundles into Felix refer to the next <a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-installingbundles" title="installing-bundles on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">sub-section</a>; the remainder of this section briefly describes shell behavior.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that the Felix shell tries to mimic a typical Unix-like shell, it is actually quite limited. The notion of <tt>cd</tt>,
for example, is only used to specify a default base URL in order to
save typing. To illustrate, assume that you want to install several
bundles from a directory on your disk, you could type:</p>
<div class="preformatted"><div class="preformattedContent">
<pre>cd file:/c:/projects/felix/bundle/
</pre>
</div></div>
<p>After issuing this <tt>cd</tt> command, you no longer need to type
the complete URL for bundles located in the above directory, only the
name of the bundle JAR file is necessary. It is not possible to perform
an equivalent <tt>ls</tt> command to list the contents of the current
base URL, since this operation is not possible with URLs. To view all
currently installed bundles, use the <tt>ps</tt> command.</p>
<p>To exit the Felix shell, simply type <tt>shutdown</tt>; any bundles
that are loaded will automatically be reloaded the next time you start
the associated profile. Additionally, any bundles that are active, will
be reactivated the next time you start the associated profile.</p>
<p><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-installingbundles"></a></p>
<h3><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-InstallingBundles"></a>Installing Bundles</h3>
<p>A bundle is the OSGi term for a component for the OSGi framework. A
bundle is simply a JAR file containing a manifest and some combination
of Java classes, embedded JAR files, native code, and resources. A
bundle may provide some specific functionality for the user or it may
implement a service that other bundles can use; bundles can only use
functionality from other bundles through shared services and packages.</p>
<p>Felix is packaged with four bundles, which are located in the <tt>bundle/</tt>
directory of the Felix installation directory. There are bundles for
the Felix shell service, a text-based shell service user interface, a
bundle repository service, and a simple example bundle. In addition to
these bundles, the bundle repository services provides access to many
other bundles for easy installation. The bundle repository service
provides a shell command, named <tt>obr</tt>, to access available bundles; refer to the <a href="http://cwiki.apache.org/FELIX/apache-felix-osgi-bundle-repository-obr.html" title="Apache Felix OSGi Bundle Repository (OBR)">Apache Felix OSGi Bundle Repository (OBR)</a> for more information.</p>
<p>Before installing any bundles, it is important to understand how
bundles are manually deployed into the framework. Bundles are deployed
in two stages; first they are installed, then they are started. To
install a bundle use the <tt>install</tt> shell command followed by a bundle URL. For example, to install the <tt>simple.jar</tt> bundle included with Felix you type (assuming you have started Felix from its installation directory):</p>
<div class="preformatted"><div class="preformattedContent">
<pre>install file:bundle/simple.jar
</pre>
</div></div>
<p>Once a bundle is installed, it can then be started by using the <tt>start</tt> command and the bundle identifier of the desired bundle. The <tt>ps</tt>
shell command is used to list all installed bundles and to obtain the
bundle's identifier. The following Oscar shell session capture
illustrates how to start the <tt>simple.jar</tt> bundle:</p>
<div class="preformatted"><div class="preformattedContent">
<pre>-&gt; install [file:bundle/simple]
-&gt; ps
START LEVEL 1
ID State Level Name
[ 0] [Active ] [ 0] System Bundle (0.8.0)
[ 1] [Active ] [ 1] Shell Service (0.8.0)
[ 2] [Active ] [ 1] Shell TUI (0.8.0)
[ 3] [Active ] [ 1] Bundle Repository (0.8.0)
[ 4] [Installed ] [ 1] Simple (0.8.0)
-&gt; start 4
Simple bundle 4 has started.
From native: Hello!
From embedded JAR: Hello!
Entry: META-INF/
Entry: org/
Entry: libfoo.so
The 'javax.servlet.http' package is not available.
The 'javax.servlet' package is not available.
-&gt;
</pre>
</div></div>
<p>The <tt>stop</tt> command is used to stop a bundle and the <tt>uninstall</tt> command is used to remove a bundle from the Felix profile. As an alternative to using the <tt>install</tt> and <tt>start</tt> commands explicitly, it is also possible to install and start a bundle in one step by using the <tt>start</tt> command with a bundle URL.</p>
<p>Bundles can be updated using the <tt>update</tt> command. The update
command allows you to specify an URL from which to retrieve the updated
bundle, but if one is not specified it will try to update the bundle
from the bundle's <tt>Bundle-UpdateLocation</tt> manifest attribute, if present, or the bundle's original location URL.</p>
<p><b>Important:</b> When you <tt>update</tt> or <tt>uninstall</tt> a
bundle, the changes appear to take effect immediately, but in reality
the changes are only partially enacted. If a bundle is updated or
uninstalled and it was exporting packages, these packages are not
removed until the framework is refreshed using the <tt>PackageAdmin</tt> service. The Felix shell offers a convenient <tt>refresh</tt> command for this purpose.</p>
<p>For an introduction to writing bundles and services, refer to the Felix bundle tutorial.</p>
<p><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-installingbundlesproxies"></a></p>
<h3><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-WebProxyIssueswhenInstallingBundles"></a>Web Proxy Issues when Installing Bundles</h3>
<p>If you use a proxy for Web access, then you may run into difficulty
using the Felix shell to install bundles from a remote URL. To remedy
this situation, certain system properties must be set to make Felix
work with your proxy. These properties are:</p>
<ul>
<li><tt>http.proxyHost</tt> - the name of the proxy host.</li>
<li><tt>http.proxyPort</tt> - the port of the proxy host.</li>
<li><tt>http.proxyAuth</tt>
- the user name and password to use when connecting to the proxy; this
string should be the user name and password separated by a colon (e.g.,
<tt>rickhall:mypassword</tt>).</li>
</ul>
<p>These system properties can be set directly on the command line when starting the JVM using the standard "<tt>-D&lt;prop&gt;=&lt;value&gt;</tt>" syntax or you can put them in the <tt>lib/system.properties</tt> file of your Felix installation; see the next section on <a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-configuringfelix" title="configuring-felix on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">configuring Felix</a> for more information.</p>
<p><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-configuringfelix"></a></p>
<h2><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-ConfiguringFelix"></a>Configuring Felix</h2>
<p>Felix uses properties to configure certain aspects of its behavior. When you execute Felix using <tt>bin/felix.jar</tt> there are two property files that are consulted, they are <tt>conf/system.properties</tt> and <tt>conf/config.properties</tt> in the Felix installation directory. Both files use standard Java property file syntax.</p>
<p>The <tt>conf/system.properties</tt> file provides a convenient
mechanism for defining Java system properties, but it is largely
ignored by Felix, since Felix does not use system properties for
configuration purposes. Any properties placed in the <tt>conf/system.properties</tt> file are available at run time via <tt>System.getProperty()</tt> and <tt>BundleContext.getProperty()</tt>. It is also possible to specify a different location for the system properties file by using the <tt>felix.system.properties</tt> system property when executing Felix. For example:</p>
<div class="preformatted"><div class="preformattedContent">
<pre>java -Dfelix.system.properties=file:/home/rickhall/system.properties -jar bin/felix.jar
</pre>
</div></div>
<p>When executing Felix, nearly configuration occurs using properties in the <tt>conf/config.properties</tt> file. It is possible to change the location of the configuration properties file by specifying a new location value using the <tt>felix.config.properties</tt>
system property. It is necessary to use a system property here since
Felix needs this value to start execution. As an example, the following
command could be used to specify a custom location for the
configuration properties file:</p>
<div class="preformatted"><div class="preformattedContent">
<pre>java -Dfelix.config.properties=file:/home/rickhall/config.properties -jar bin/felix.jar
</pre>
</div></div>
<p>In this example the configuration properties will be read from the
specified URL. All remaining configuration properties should be defined
in the <tt>config.properties</tt> file itself. All configuration properties are accessible at run time via <tt>BundleContext.getProperty()</tt>.</p>
<p>Felix does provide one other way to specify configuration
properties, but to do so you must manually instantiate an instance of
Felix, rather than executing Felix' JAR file. When you create your own
instance of Felix, it is possible to pass in precise configuration
properties to the <tt>Felix.start()</tt> method. If this approach is used, then no property files are consulted.</p>
<p>The following properties describes the purpose of each Felix configuration property:</p>
<ul>
<li><tt>felix.log.level</tt> - An integer value indicating the
degree of logging reported by the framework; a higher value results in
more logging. If zero ('0') is specified, then logging is turned off
completely. The log levels match those specified in the OSGi Log
Service (i.e., 1 = error, 2 = warning, 3 = information, and 4 = debug).
The default value is 1.</li>
<li><tt>felix.auto.install.&lt;n&gt;</tt> - Space-delimited list of bundle URLs to automatically install when Felix is started, where <tt>&lt;n&gt;</tt> is the start level into which the bundle will be installed (e.g., <tt>felix.auto.install.2</tt>).</li>
<li><tt>felix.auto.start</tt> - Space-delimited list of bundle URLs to automatically install and start when Oscar is started, where <tt>&lt;n&gt;</tt> is the start level into which the bundle will be installed (e.g., <tt>felix.auto.start.2</tt>).</li>
<li><tt>felix.startlevel.framework</tt> - The initial start level of the framework once it starts execution; the default value is 1.</li>
<li><tt>felix.startlevel.bundle</tt> - The default start level for newly installed bundles; the default value is 1.</li>
<li><tt>felix.service.urlhandlers</tt> - Flag to indicate whether Felix should enable the URL Handlers service, which will result in calls to <tt>URL.setURLStreamHandlerFactory()</tt> and <tt>URLConnection.setContentHandlerFactory()</tt>. The default value is "<tt>true</tt>" to enable the URL Handlers service.</li>
<li><tt>felix.embedded.execution</tt> - Flag to indicate whether Felix is embedded into a host application; the default value is "<tt>false</tt>". If this flag is "<tt>true</tt>" then Felix will not call <tt>System.exit()</tt> upon termination.</li>
<li><tt>felix.strict.osgi</tt> - Flag to indicate whether Felix is running in strict OSGi mode; the default value is "<tt>true</tt>". If this flag is "<tt>false</tt>" it currently enables a single non-OSGi-compliant feature: persisting <tt>BundleActivator</tt>s that implement <tt>Serializable</tt>. This feature is not recommended since it is non-compliant.</li>
<li><tt>felix.cache.bufsize</tt>
- Sets the buffer size to be used by the bundle cache when copying JAR
files and input streams; the default value is 4096 bytes. The integer
value of this string provides control over the size of the internal
buffer of the disk cache for performance reasons.</li>
<li><tt>felix.cache.dir</tt>
- Sets the directory to be used by the bundle cache as its cache
directory. The cache directory is where all profile directories are
stored and a profile directory is where a set of installed bundles are
stored. By default, the cache directory is <tt>.felix</tt> in the user's home directory. If this property is specified, then its value will be used as the cache directory instead of <tt>.felix</tt>. This directory will be created if it does not exist.</li>
<li><tt>felix.cache.profile</tt>
- Sets the profile name that will be used to create a profile directory
inside of the bundle cache directory. The created directory will
contain all installed bundles associated with the profile.</li>
<li><tt>felix.cache.profiledir</tt>
- Sets the directory to use as the profile directory for the bundle
cache; by default the profile name is used to create a directory in the
<tt>.felix</tt> bundle cache directory (more precisely <tt>${felix.cache.dir}/${felix.cache.profile</tt>}). If the <tt>felix.cache.profiledir</tt>
property is specified, then the cache directory and profile name
properties are ignored since they are only used to calculate the
profile directory. The specified value of the profile directory
property is used directly as the directory to contain all cached
bundles. This directory will be created if it does not exist.</li>
</ul>
<p>The Felix installation contains a default <tt>conf/config.properties</tt> file for automatically starting the shell-related bundles.</p>
<p><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-propertysubstitution"></a></p>
<h3><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-SystemPropertySubstituion"></a>System Property Substituion</h3>
<p>It is possible to use system properties to specify the values of properties in the <tt>conf/config.properties</tt> file. This is achieved through system property substitution, which is instigated by using <tt>${&lt;property&gt;</tt>} syntax, where <tt>&lt;property&gt;</tt>
is the name of a system property to substitute. When such a property
value is retrieved by a bundle, the system property value will be
substituted into the bundle property value as appropriate.</p>
<p><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-defaultshell"></a></p>
<h3><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-ChangingtheCommandShellUserInterface"></a>Changing the Command Shell User Interface</h3>
<p>Felix' shell service supports multiple user interface
implementations; the default shell user interface is text-based, but a
simple graphical shell is also available. To change the default shell
user interface, you must download the Shell GUI and Shell GUI Plugin
bundles. Then you must modify the <tt>felix.auto.start</tt> property in the <tt>conf/config.properties</tt> file of your Felix installation. For the text-based user interface, the property value should look like this:</p>
<div class="preformatted"><div class="preformattedContent">
<pre>felix.auto.start.1=file:bundle/shell.jar file:bundle/shelltui.jar \
file:bundle/bundlerepository.jar
</pre>
</div></div>
<p>This property value instructs Felix to automatically start the shell
service, the shell textual user interface, and the bundle repository. (<em>Note:
The "\" character at the end of the above line indicates that the
property value continues on the next line; it is also possible to
specify the property value on one line.</em>) For the GUI-based shell user interface, the property value should look something like this:</p>
<div class="preformatted"><div class="preformattedContent">
<pre>felix.auto.start.1=file:bundle/shell.jar file:bundle/bundlerepository.jar \
file:bundle/shellgui.jar file:bundle/shellplugin.jar
</pre>
</div></div>
<p>This property value instructs Felix to automatically start the shell
service, the bundle repository, the shell GUI, and the shell GUI
plugins.</p>
<p><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-configuringbundles"></a></p>
<h2><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-ConfiguringBundles"></a>Configuring Bundles</h2>
<p>Some bundles use properties to configure certain aspects of their behavior. As an example, the default URL for the <tt>cd</tt> command of the shell service can be specified using the property <tt>felix.shell.baseurl</tt>.
It is a good idea, when implementing bundles, to parameterize them with
properties where appropriate. To learn about the configuration options
for specific bundles, refer to the documentation that accompanies them.</p>
<p>Bundle properties are also defined in the <tt>conf/config.properties</tt> property file. Any property placed in this file will be accessible via <tt>BundleContext.getProperty()</tt>
at run time. The property file uses the standard Java property file
syntax (i.e., attribute-value pairs). For information on changing the
default location of this file, refer to the section on <a href="#ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-configuringfelix" title="configuring-felix on Apache Felix Usage Documentation">configuring Felix</a>.</p>
<p><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-feedback"></a></p>
<h2><a name="ApacheFelixUsageDocumentation-Feedback"></a>Feedback</h2>
<p>Subscribe to the Felix users mailing list by sending a message to <span class="nobr"><a href="mailto:users-subscribe@incubator.apache.org" title="Send mail to users-subscribe@felix.apache.org" rel="nofollow">users-subscribe@felix.apache.org<sup><img class="rendericon" src="apache-felix-usage-documentation_files/mail_small.gif" alt="" align="absmiddle" border="0" height="12" width="13"></sup></a></span>; after subscribing, email questions or feedback to <span class="nobr"><a href="mailto:users@felix.apache.org" title="Send mail to users@felix.apache.org" rel="nofollow">users@felix.apache.org<sup><img class="rendericon" src="apache-felix-usage-documentation_files/mail_small.gif" alt="" align="absmiddle" border="0" height="12" width="13"></sup></a></span>.</p>
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