Summary

In this chapter, we looked at the Gogo shell and how it can be extended in Equinox. Many of the examples here will work against a Felix implementation as well, although the SSHD example is specific to Equinox. The first part covered basic Gogo syntax, including variables, literals, functions, and how to run the console either locally or via remote access.

The second part of the chapter covered how to extend the console. The simplest kind of extension is with built-in shell functions, which can be iteratively developed or sourced from an external file. However, for more complex commands, shell extensions can be provided in the form of Java objects, which when integrated with Declarative Services or Blueprint, do not need to have any OSGi dependency at all.

The next chapter will look at how native code is used in Java and how native libraries can be loaded into bundles.