The bnd Workspace Model
A common recurring theme on the Bndtools and OSGi enRoute mailing lists is that people, usually from the Maven world,
hate the bnd workspace model. The fact that there is a cnf directory (like the .git directory in Git) and that the
project directories must be on the same level as the cnf directory is seen as an (often huge) constraint.
Reasons
The reason that bnd works this way is mostly driven by the simplicity of the model:
- Since a workspace is a single directory it becomes very easy to recreate it at another place, just like Git does.
- Tools become simpler because everything is in one place and the top level directories are always projects. I.e. the file system exactly represents the structure so no mapping is required. So if we’re looking for a bundle, we know the directory is the Bundle Symbolic Name.
- The
cnfdirectory playes the same role as the.gitdirectory in Git. It marks the workspace as a bnd workspace and contains shared configuration information. In the Maven world, this role is often played by the parent POM in a multi-module setup.
Simplicity pays off in many different places.