Changes in 6.3.0

Bnd/Bndtools 6.3.0

See the Release section of the README for where to find Bnd/Bndtools.

Bndtools

• Bndtools "Bnd Bundle Path" class path container now supports negation in the packages attribute of -buildpath and -testpath clauses. Negated packages are marked NON_ACCESSIBLE in Eclipse.
• Bndtools class path container updated for better fidelity. For compilation, when using version=latest or version=snapshot a project's output folders are used for source code only and the bundle is used for compilation. For runtime, when using version=latest or version=snapshot a project's output folders are no longer included. These changed provide better fidelity since a bundle may contain more or less classes/resources than the project's output folders. The classes in a bundle may be transformed and can be different than the classes in a project's output folders.
• When hovering over a macro name in a bnd editor, the hover view will show the decorated value of the macro.

Bndtools m2e

• Fixes to package decoration when using the new packaging goals of bnd-maven-plugin.

Bnd

• Bnd adds decoration support, with unused literal inclusion, for the following instructions:
  • -conditionalpackage
  • -privatepackage
  • -includepackage
  • -includeresource
• The -privatepackage instruction is now also a merged instruction.
• The path instructions, such as -buildpath, -testpath, and -runbundles, which already support decoration, now include unused literals.
• Unused literal inclusion in decoration now allows the decoration to add additional entries to the beginning or the end of the decorated item.
• Instruction decoration now supports removal of attributes and non-overwriting of attributes. Prefixing the attribute name with ! means removal. Prefixing the attribute name with ~ means do not overwrite an existing attribute value.
• Fixes to support the Eclipse Transformer project's Bnd Analyzer and Verifier plugins. The re-analyze code path was fixed to properly reset the analyzer and analyze the content again.
• The external plugin handler was enhanced to support external plugins implementing the Plugin and RegistryPlugin interfaces.
• The AnalyzerPlugins and VerifierPlugins now have an invocation ordering which can be influenced by the plugin implementation.
• For Java 1.1, the ee name is changed to JRE.

Bnd Command Line

• None.

Documentation

• The styling of the documentation has added a search bar and indication of when macros and instructions are in effect.

Bnd Maven Plugins

• bnd-baseline-maven-plugin now has a reportFile configuration which names the file to contain the baseline report. The report format is expanded with more detail.

Bnd Gradle Plugins

• BundleTaskExtension is updated to make the generated manifest available from the task’s manifest.effectiveManifest property.
• Updated the group property values for tasks to better match standard gradle task groups.

Backward compatibility

• Bndtools is built to run on Eclipse 2020-06 (4.16) or later. So Bndtools may not run on older versions of Eclipse.
• Bndtools m2e is built to run on Eclipse m2e 1.16.0 or later. So Bndtools m2e may not run on older versions of Eclipse m2e.
• The Bnd Maven plugins require a minimum of Maven 3.3.9.
• The Bnd Gradle plugins require a minimum of Gradle 6.7 for Java 8 to Java 15, Gradle 7.0 for Java 16, and Gradle 7.3 for Java 17.
• The Bnd Gradle plugins and tasks underwent a large update in 6.0 to modernize their implementations and prepare for Gradle 7 and newer Gradle idioms. All Bnd Gradle task properties are now Gradle Properties and should generally be set using an assignment in your build script. A number of previously deprecated task properties have been removed. The conventions are now deprecated and replaced by extensions.

Known Issues

• Eclipse m2e has a bug which can result in build looping. If you experience this, update Eclipse m2e to 1.18.2 or later which seems to have fixed the issue.

• Windows 10 users: Windows 10 Defender significantly slows down Eclipse, reason being Windows 10 Defender scanning the JAR files. The problem has been reported to Microsoft here. Until then, a workaround to this problem is to add Eclipse root directory to Windows 10 Defender’s exclusion list, detailed steps are shared here.

  Note: This is not just an Eclipse issue on Windows 10.

  See also Bnd Tips for Windows users.