What is OSGI ?

Most of the eclipse programmers must be familiar with OSGI ( if not are they eclipse programmers ?????) . OSGI stands for Open Services Gateway Initiative it promotes open specifications for the delivery of managed services to networked environments

These specifications define the OSGi Service Platform, which is a java based platform , that can be remotely managed.The core part of the specifications is a framework that defines an application life cycle management model, a service registry, an Execution environment and Modules. Based on this framework, a large number of OSGi Layers, APIs, and Services have been defined

Interestingly Eclipse uses OSGi as the basis for its plug-in system. Why eclipse using osgi instead of custom plugin system ???

developerworks saying "Early versions of Eclipse were also designed as a collection of plug-ins, and Eclipse included its own propriety plug-in system to manage the interaction. However, as the requirements of the Eclipse IDE grew, it became apparent that a more robust solution was required. Basic requirements of this new system included the ability to dynamically handle the addition of new plug-ins and stopping existing plug-ins."

The below mentioned article gives an overview OSGI ...worth reading!!!!!
http://gravity.sourceforge.net/servicebinder/osginutshell.html