Administering bundle repositories
OSGi applications can share many common utility bundles. To simplify maintenance, and reduce the application footprint, the application does not have to include its own copy of each utility bundle. Instead, bundles can be hosted in a bundle repository, from where they are retrieved during deployment. You can administer bundles and composite bundles held in the internal bundle repository of the product, and also add links to external bundle repositories.
About this task
WebSphere® Application Server includes an internal bundle repository, in which you can store the bundles and composite bundles for your OSGi applications. The external bundle repositories are bundle repositories that are available outside of WebSphere Application Server. If your OSGi applications reference bundles that are stored in an external bundle repository, you must configure a link (name and URL) to the repository so that the provisioner can retrieve the bundles when required. When an OSGi application is imported as an asset, the provisioner attempts to satisfy all its dependencies by using the contents of the asset, the contents of the internal bundle repository, and the contents of any available external bundle repositories.
You can link to any external bundle repository that complies with the OSGi Alliance RFC-0112 Bundle Repository Draft Specification. Such a repository consists of a website with a bundle repository XML file that describes an OSGi-compliant repository. Depending on how the external bundle repository is implemented, you might not be able to use it to provision services, or to store composite bundles or bundles referenced by composite bundles.
If your bundle includes Blueprint XML files that specify service or reference elements, and the bundle is included in an EBA asset or installed in the internal bundle repository, then these elements are respected during provisioning and appropriate services are provisioned when needed. For more information, see Provisioning for OSGi applications.