Overview

Provisioning ARchive (PAR) is a ZIP file format for packaging applications and provision them altogether onto a target device capable of running them.

The PAR format is introduced by JSR 124, "J2EE Client Provisioning".

A PAR file can be stored in the Software Repository of an Remote Management backend server where its settings can be further adjusted. Upon installation on an OSGi-enabled device, based on the device requirements of the PAR file the backend server will decide if the target device is capable enough to host the PAR's content.

The PAR Editor provides a user-friendly interface for creating and editing PAR files and for populating them with OSGi bundles. The editor supports PAR upload to the Remote Management Software Repository as well as deployment of the component bundles to an OSGi runtime directly from Eclipse.

PAR Projects

The PAR Editor handles each PAR file by representing it as a PAR Project in Eclipse. Such a project reflects the structure of the actual archive. It is a placeholder for the provisioning descriptor provisioning.xml, placed in the META-INF folder, for the descriptors in the formats of the backend and for PAR components included in the archive at its import as a project.

Specifics in PAR Support

The PAR editor is adapted to the specifics of the Remote Manager Software Repository - besides the mandatory provisioning descriptor provisioning.xml it supports only specific client bundle descriptors which describe in a special way the location of the archive's bundles along with the required startup order for the OSGi environment.

In detail, a PAR file editable with the PAR Editor has one TGT-Bundle descriptor and one optional service descriptor. Both descriptors reside in the META-INF directory of the PAR Project and of the associated PAR file.

The TGT-Bundle descriptor is called <project_name>.tgt, has MIME type application/x-tgt-descriptor and contains references to the bundles with regard to the Eclipse environment or to the PAR file root.

The Remote Manager service descriptor is called <project_name>.mprm and has MIME type mprm/service-descriptor. It references the TGT-Bundle descriptor information and specifies the startup order of the bundles in the PAR file.

The PAR Editor supports only descriptor files of the application/x-tgt-descriptor and mprm/service-descriptor types and does not work with content files in a PAR file.

Known Issues and Limitations

In Eclipse 4.2 there is known bug on Save action events which could lead to unsaved changes in PAR Editor.