Container

Running universAAL in different Containers

This section contains information about the container functionalities, e.g. installing and running the platform in different container (like OSGi or Android).

As universAAL uses a modular design approach with the ability to add, remove, and replace modules at runtime, the usage of OSGi as underlying container has proven beneficial. It was implemented as the first and is still the default container, although other container are already supported. There are different ways to start the universAAL platform in the various container and to set up the list of modules/bundles to start:

• OSGi
  • Apache Karaf: Karaf is a branch of Felix and provides some additional features. It is used in universAAL, e.g., to realize the deployment of new bundles. It is not integrated in Eclipse but was selected as the target container for universAAL.
  • Pax Runner in Eclipse: using Felix is the easiest way as it is directly integrated into Eclipse, but it is not as stable as Karaf. universAAL provides some tools that integrate in Eclipse Run Configurations as additional tabs to ease the usage in Eclipse:
    • The "Pax Runner"-tab provides a comfortable way to create the list of bundles to run. All bundles need to be provided in the list.
    • The "uAAL Pax Runner"-tab is a universAAL-specific modification of the Pax Runner. You only need to select the projects in your Eclipse workspace and the middleware version to use and the tool resolves all dependencies.
  • External Runner: can be used to run universAAL outside of Eclipse with Pax Runner.
• Native Android: is a porting of universAAL to Android; universAAL can be started directly as a native Android application.