This chapter looked at OSGi services as an alternative means to provide dependent services in an Eclipse or OSGi application. By registering services either imperatively at bundle start-up in an activator, or by using one of the declarative services representations, an operational system can evolve by connecting services together during a single runtime. Different approaches for configuration were shown with either embedded values in the service component document, or derived from external properties or configuration with Config Admin.

The next chapter will look in more detail at how the console shell works and how commands can be contributed to an OSGi runtime.