Jeff McAffer wrote:

> In Eclipse we have continually refactored bundles.  In 3.2 the Runtime bundle was split into 5 or 6 bundles.  In 3.0 the UI was split into 7.  This was driven by actual usecases and requirements.  It turns out that one of the key factors in the simplicity/difficulty of doing that refactoring was Java package naming!  We got hosed a couple of times by lumping fundamentally unrelated things together in the same Java package.  org.eclipse.core.runtme for example.  When we went to refactor we ended up needing to split the same package over multiple bundles.  This is possible but can be ugly and in the end results in some unfortunate legacy naming glitches.

On the subject of refactoring, perhaps you would consider removing the org.osgi.* packages inside org.eclipse.osgi bundle and instead use the core and compendium bundles from OSGi directly.  Not sure if there is any “legal” or technical impediment to this approach.

My 2c

I'm in agreement on bundling making sense from a code/reuse/componentization point of view.  We use a simple rule.
        "If two bundles will never be shipped separately, combine them"
Your definition of "never" may change over time but that's ok.  What doesn't change?  In Eclipse we have continually refactored bundles.  In 3.2 the Runtime bundle was split into 5 or 6 bundles.  In 3.0 the UI was split into 7.  This was driven by actual usecases and requirements.  It turns out that one of the key factors in the simplicity/difficulty of doing that refactoring was Java package naming!  We got hosed a couple of times by lumping fundamentally unrelated things together in the same Java package.  org.eclipse.core.runtme for example.  When we went to refactor we ended up needing to split the same package over multiple bundles.  This is possible but can be ugly and in the end results in some unfortunate legacy naming glitches.

Anyway, this is distinct from discussions of extensions vs services etc.  I actually disagree with Simon that this should impact what you do.  Yes there is one extension point definer but the extension point definer is the moral equivalent the bundle that defines a service *interface* not the instances of the service.  These are the people who define the contract.  In OSGi typically there is only one of a given service interface.  There is no particular need to pair extension use with Require-Bundle use.  Extension points can be moved between bundles as can service interface definitions so indeed it could be seen as a programming/design error to depend on extension point origin.

Jeff

Craig

I wanted to echo Oleg's points.  Deciding whether to have one bundle or two is a very similar decision to whether you should have one class or two.  The most important thing, in my opinion, is to model the problem appropriately, rather than trying to create less bundles in the hope of some performance gains.  The reality is that fine grained bundles are typically more flexible and more reusable than coarse grained bundles, but they are also more complicated to understand.

Something that I have observed is that people building bundles for the Eclipse platform tend to build less fine grained bundles than people building bundles for some other OSGi/Equinox application.  One reason for this, I believe, is Eclipse extension points: While an extension point allows you to achieve similar things to an OSGi service, there is only ever exactly one provider of a particular Eclipse extension point, whereas there can be many providers of a particular OSGi service.  Eclipse bundles are typically not composed of OSGi services, although that is not to say they cannot be used.  Instead the Eclipse platform tends to favor extension points.  Reasons for this include Eclipse's necessity for laziness, and another is Eclipse's origins and life before OSGi.

I tend to find that when I'm building bundles for Eclipse I use the Require-Bundle manifest header to describe my bundle's dependency on a particular bundle (that often declares an extension point to which I wish contribute), whereas when I am building bundles for OSGi/Equinox I use the Import-Package manifest header.  Require-Bundle encourages coarse grained dependencies, whereas Import-Package encourages fine grained dependencies.

I would suggest leaning towards fine grained bundles rather than coarse, since merging bundles is far easier than splitting bundles.

I hope this helps,

Simon

Hi Craig,
Back when we were doing the runtime split for 3.2 I did some testing on how having code in separate plugins vs. one plugin impacts performance.

Performance-wise having code in separate bundles had small impact on startup time. To be more concrete, having an extra bundle on WinXP 2GHz 2Gb adds about 1ms to the "warm" startup time. The impact is more significant for the "cold" startup, but those are very hard to quanitfy. My guess would be 2 - 5 ms, but it is just a guess (variability of cold startups is too high).

What did seem to impact startup performance was the amount of code that had to be loaded. More features -> more code -> slower startup. Again, to put some numbers, on the system above having a few extra classes loaded in activators added 28 ms to the startup sime.

There was no detectable impact on the runtime performance. Memory impact was rather hard to measure reliable; from the common sense there should be very little cost memory-wise. As for threads, there is no relationship between the number of threads and number of bundles.

In my opinion, granularity of bundles should be determined more by things like:
- business considerations;
- need to keeping things compartmentalized / reusable;
- separation of work between developers / teams.

>From a technical side there is a small cost associated with having extra bundles, but it seems to be rather small. That said please don't create a bundle per class

Sincerely,
Oleg Besedin

I'm wondering if there are any rules of thumb in terms of the
granularity of bundles?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of
having fine grained bundles versus coarser grained bundles?  For
instance, what is the average cost of a bundle in terms of:

- Memory overhead?
- Classloader lookup times?
- Threads in the system?
- Other overhead?

The positive things I can think of include the ability for the system to
lazily load only the bundles that are actually necessary.  What are the
other advantages of finer grained bundles?

Thanks for any insights you can provide.
Craig

PS - I'm primarily talking about bundles in the context of the Eclipse
platform rather than at the Equinox framework level.
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Jeff McAffer wrote:

> In Eclipse we have continually refactored bundles.  In 3.2 the Runtime bundle was split into 5 or 6 bundles.  In 3.0 the UI was split into 7.  This was driven by actual usecases and requirements.  It turns out that one of the key factors in the simplicity/difficulty of doing that refactoring was Java package naming!  We got hosed a couple of times by lumping fundamentally unrelated things together in the same Java package.  org.eclipse.core.runtme for example.  When we went to refactor we ended up needing to split the same package over multiple bundles.  This is possible but can be ugly and in the end results in some unfortunate legacy naming glitches.

On the subject of refactoring, perhaps you would consider removing the org.osgi.* packages inside org.eclipse.osgi bundle and instead use the core and compendium bundles from OSGi directly.  Not sure if there is any “legal” or technical impediment to this approach.

My 2c

I'm in agreement on bundling making sense from a code/reuse/componentization point of view.  We use a simple rule.
        "If two bundles will never be shipped separately, combine them"
Your definition of "never" may change over time but that's ok.  What doesn't change?  In Eclipse we have continually refactored bundles.  In 3.2 the Runtime bundle was split into 5 or 6 bundles.  In 3.0 the UI was split into 7.  This was driven by actual usecases and requirements.  It turns out that one of the key factors in the simplicity/difficulty of doing that refactoring was Java package naming!  We got hosed a couple of times by lumping fundamentally unrelated things together in the same Java package.  org.eclipse.core.runtme for example.  When we went to refactor we ended up needing to split the same package over multiple bundles.  This is possible but can be ugly and in the end results in some unfortunate legacy naming glitches.

Anyway, this is distinct from discussions of extensions vs services etc.  I actually disagree with Simon that this should impact what you do.  Yes there is one extension point definer but the extension point definer is the moral equivalent the bundle that defines a service *interface* not the instances of the service.  These are the people who define the contract.  In OSGi typically there is only one of a given service interface.  There is no particular need to pair extension use with Require-Bundle use.  Extension points can be moved between bundles as can service interface definitions so indeed it could be seen as a programming/design error to depend on extension point origin.

Jeff

Craig

I wanted to echo Oleg's points.  Deciding whether to have one bundle or two is a very similar decision to whether you should have one class or two.  The most important thing, in my opinion, is to model the problem appropriately, rather than trying to create less bundles in the hope of some performance gains.  The reality is that fine grained bundles are typically more flexible and more reusable than coarse grained bundles, but they are also more complicated to understand.

Something that I have observed is that people building bundles for the Eclipse platform tend to build less fine grained bundles than people building bundles for some other OSGi/Equinox application.  One reason for this, I believe, is Eclipse extension points: While an extension point allows you to achieve similar things to an OSGi service, there is only ever exactly one provider of a particular Eclipse extension point, whereas there can be many providers of a particular OSGi service.  Eclipse bundles are typically not composed of OSGi services, although that is not to say they cannot be used.  Instead the Eclipse platform tends to favor extension points.  Reasons for this include Eclipse's necessity for laziness, and another is Eclipse's origins and life before OSGi.

I tend to find that when I'm building bundles for Eclipse I use the Require-Bundle manifest header to describe my bundle's dependency on a particular bundle (that often declares an extension point to which I wish contribute), whereas when I am building bundles for OSGi/Equinox I use the Import-Package manifest header.  Require-Bundle encourages coarse grained dependencies, whereas Import-Package encourages fine grained dependencies.

I would suggest leaning towards fine grained bundles rather than coarse, since merging bundles is far easier than splitting bundles.

I hope this helps,

Simon

Hi Craig,
Back when we were doing the runtime split for 3.2 I did some testing on how having code in separate plugins vs. one plugin impacts performance.

Performance-wise having code in separate bundles had small impact on startup time. To be more concrete, having an extra bundle on WinXP 2GHz 2Gb adds about 1ms to the "warm" startup time. The impact is more significant for the "cold" startup, but those are very hard to quanitfy. My guess would be 2 - 5 ms, but it is just a guess (variability of cold startups is too high).

What did seem to impact startup performance was the amount of code that had to be loaded. More features -> more code -> slower startup. Again, to put some numbers, on the system above having a few extra classes loaded in activators added 28 ms to the startup sime.

There was no detectable impact on the runtime performance. Memory impact was rather hard to measure reliable; from the common sense there should be very little cost memory-wise. As for threads, there is no relationship between the number of threads and number of bundles.

In my opinion, granularity of bundles should be determined more by things like:
- business considerations;
- need to keeping things compartmentalized / reusable;
- separation of work between developers / teams.

>From a technical side there is a small cost associated with having extra bundles, but it seems to be rather small. That said please don't create a bundle per class

Sincerely,
Oleg Besedin

I'm wondering if there are any rules of thumb in terms of the
granularity of bundles?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of
having fine grained bundles versus coarser grained bundles?  For
instance, what is the average cost of a bundle in terms of:

- Memory overhead?
- Classloader lookup times?
- Threads in the system?
- Other overhead?

The positive things I can think of include the ability for the system to
lazily load only the bundles that are actually necessary.  What are the
other advantages of finer grained bundles?

Thanks for any insights you can provide.
Craig

PS - I'm primarily talking about bundles in the context of the Eclipse
platform rather than at the Equinox framework level.
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Hi Tom,

Please refer to my responses below.

There are a few reasons we package the core org.osgi classes in the framework implementation (org.eclipse.osgi)

1) Packaging convenience.  Having all the org.osgi.* classes packaged directly in the framework implementation reduces the amount jars you need to find and place on the classpath of the framework.
-> I was assuming that the osgi bundles will be auto-started and that the required packages are exported which can then be imported by org.eclipse.osgi.  I haven’t actually done this but I think it should work.
2) Technically we need to modify some of the classes provided by the OSGi Alliance to hook into our implementation.  For example, FrameworkUtil, AdminPermission and BundleSignerCondition.

-> Can we get away with just extending the osgi interfaces?  I guess I find changing someone else’s framework classes/interfaces unappealing.

3) Working on future reference implementations for the OSGi Alliance.  We need the ability to modify the API with enhancements that will become available in future public OSGi specifications.  For example, we are currently working on the Reference Implementation for OSGi R4.1 which introduces a small number new methods.

-> Personally, I think that this is even an important consideration.  Switching OSGi R4 bundles with OSGi R4.1 ones will be a “snap” (hopefully) when they become available.  Like everyone else, I suppose OSGi will also provide maintenance or versioned releases to fix defects, etc.  It would be expedient to simply switch to those versioned ones without having to release an Equinox distro in response.  In this sense, tight coupling has its disadvantages in my view.

Tom

Jeff McAffer wrote:
 
> In Eclipse we have continually refactored bundles.  In 3.2 the Runtime bundle was split into 5 or 6 bundles.  In 3.0 the UI was split into 7.  This was driven by actual usecases and requirements.  It turns out that one of the key factors in the simplicity/difficulty of doing that refactoring was Java package naming!  We got hosed a couple of times by lumping fundamentally unrelated things together in the same Java package.  org.eclipse.core.runtme for example.  When we went to refactor we ended up needing to split the same package over multiple bundles.  This is possible but can be ugly and in the end results in some unfortunate legacy naming glitches.
 
On the subject of refactoring, perhaps you would consider removing the org.osgi.* packages inside org.eclipse.osgi bundle and instead use the core and compendium bundles from OSGi directly.  Not sure if there is any “legal” or technical impediment to this approach.
 

Rick Litton

From: equinox-dev-bounces-j9T/66MeVpFAfugRpC6u6w@public.gmane.org [mailto:equinox-dev-bounces-j9T/66MeVpFAfugRpC6u6w@public.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Jeff McAffer
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 5:40 PM
To: Equinox development mailing list
Subject: Re: [equinox-dev] Bundle Granularity?
 

My 2c

I'm in agreement on bundling making sense from a code/reuse/componentization point of view.  We use a simple rule.
       "If two bundles will never be shipped separately, combine them"
Your definition of "never" may change over time but that's ok.  What doesn't change?  In Eclipse we have continually refactored bundles.  In 3.2 the Runtime bundle was split into 5 or 6 bundles.  In 3.0 the UI was split into 7.  This was driven by actual usecases and requirements.  It turns out that one of the key factors in the simplicity/difficulty of doing that refactoring was Java package naming!  We got hosed a couple of times by lumping fundamentally unrelated things together in the same Java package.  org.eclipse.core.runtme for example.  When we went to refactor we ended up needing to split the same package over multiple bundles.  This is possible but can be ugly and in the end results in some unfortunate legacy naming glitches.

Anyway, this is distinct from discussions of extensions vs services etc.  I actually disagree with Simon that this should impact what you do.  Yes there is one extension point definer but the extension point definer is the moral equivalent the bundle that defines a service *interface* not the instances of the service.  These are the people who define the contract.  In OSGi typically there is only one of a given service interface.  There is no particular need to pair extension use with Require-Bundle use.  Extension points can be moved between bundles as can service interface definitions so indeed it could be seen as a programming/design error to depend on extension point origin.

Jeff

Craig

I wanted to echo Oleg's points.  Deciding whether to have one bundle or two is a very similar decision to whether you should have one class or two.  The most important thing, in my opinion, is to model the problem appropriately, rather than trying to create less bundles in the hope of some performance gains.  The reality is that fine grained bundles are typically more flexible and more reusable than coarse grained bundles, but they are also more complicated to understand.

Something that I have observed is that people building bundles for the Eclipse platform tend to build less fine grained bundles than people building bundles for some other OSGi/Equinox application.  One reason for this, I believe, is Eclipse extension points: While an extension point allows you to achieve similar things to an OSGi service, there is only ever exactly one provider of a particular Eclipse extension point, whereas there can be many providers of a particular OSGi service.  Eclipse bundles are typically not composed of OSGi services, although that is not to say they cannot be used.  Instead the Eclipse platform tends to favor extension points.  Reasons for this include Eclipse's necessity for laziness, and another is Eclipse's origins and life before OSGi.

I tend to find that when I'm building bundles for Eclipse I use the Require-Bundle manifest header to describe my bundle's dependency on a particular bundle (that often declares an extension point to which I wish contribute), whereas when I am building bundles for OSGi/Equinox I use the Import-Package manifest header.  Require-Bundle encourages coarse grained dependencies, whereas Import-Package encourages fine grained dependencies.

I would suggest leaning towards fine grained bundles rather than coarse, since merging bundles is far easier than splitting bundles.

I hope this helps,

Simon

Hi Craig,
Back when we were doing the runtime split for 3.2 I did some testing on how having code in separate plugins vs. one plugin impacts performance.

Performance-wise having code in separate bundles had small impact on startup time. To be more concrete, having an extra bundle on WinXP 2GHz 2Gb adds about 1ms to the "warm" startup time. The impact is more significant for the "cold" startup, but those are very hard to quanitfy. My guess would be 2 - 5 ms, but it is just a guess (variability of cold startups is too high).

What did seem to impact startup performance was the amount of code that had to be loaded. More features -> more code -> slower startup. Again, to put some numbers, on the system above having a few extra classes loaded in activators added 28 ms to the startup sime.

There was no detectable impact on the runtime performance. Memory impact was rather hard to measure reliable; from the common sense there should be very little cost memory-wise. As for threads, there is no relationship between the number of threads and number of bundles.

In my opinion, granularity of bundles should be determined more by things like:
- business considerations;
- need to keeping things compartmentalized / reusable;
- separation of work between developers / teams.

>From a technical side there is a small cost associated with having extra bundles, but it seems to be rather small. That said please don't create a bundle per class

Sincerely,
Oleg Besedin

I'm wondering if there are any rules of thumb in terms of the
granularity of bundles?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of
having fine grained bundles versus coarser grained bundles?  For
instance, what is the average cost of a bundle in terms of:

- Memory overhead?
- Classloader lookup times?
- Threads in the system?
- Other overhead?

The positive things I can think of include the ability for the system to
lazily load only the bundles that are actually necessary.  What are the
other advantages of finer grained bundles?

Thanks for any insights you can provide.
Craig

PS - I'm primarily talking about bundles in the context of the Eclipse
platform rather than at the Equinox framework level.
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