Changing the configuration store location for the OSGi Configuration Admin service?

Question

Is there a way to change the configuration store location for the OSGi Configuration Admin service? I'd like to have the properties files exist in another bundle so they'd exist in source control & in the deployment rather than the OSGi store.

Answer 1

In the end I decided to use Apache Felix File Install to update the configuration properties of a Configuration Admin ManagedService. This seems to work passably well.

It's a little kludgy because when the files are updated the new configuration properties get pushed to the managed service without regard to their being correct values. This means that on next startup the values will still be bad & need to be set to defaults.

It should work for now.

Answer 2

The Config Admin implementations cannot do this, at least not in a portable way via the specification. Instead you need a "management agent" that pushes configuration data into Config Admin via the API; it can derive that configuration data from any source it wishes.

FileInstall is a very simple example of a management agent. If it does not do exactly what you want then it is not too difficult to write your own.

The ManagedServices will still need to perform validation of incoming configuration data and dynamically react to new configuration data. OSGi is a dynamic platform and Config Admin is designed to allow for on-the-fly reconfiguration of a running system.