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6. Considered alternatives

Scoping approach

Another potential approach for providing similar capabilities is to try to use virtual bundles to implement Discuss a scoping like approach. Scoping can be modeled reasonably well as manifest rewriting (i.e., mandatory attributes and renaming). If it were possible to install bundles and "lock" them in the INSTALLED state, then these bundles could be used like templates for creating scopes via manifest rewriting in a virtual bundle. The same template bundle could be copied into different scopes using different virtual bundles in the different scopes or could be shared among scopes by appropriately rewriting the metadata. This approach could also scope the service registry, since it would be possible to inject proxied bundle contexts into the scoped bundles (via their virtual bundle wrapper) that only show services in the appropriate scope.

The biggest issue here is achieving complete fidelity with the OSGi specification for handling of bundles. The virtual bundle mechanism would need to include support for dynamic imports, fragments, and lazy activation. All of these are potentially feasible, but would need to be fleshed out.