[FELIX-2942] Bundles with higher start level get activated even before framework reaches that start level

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: framework-3.0.8
• Fix Version/s: framework-3.2.2
• Component/s: Framework
• Assignee: Richard S. Hall
• Reporter: Sanjeeb Kumar Sahoo
• Created: 03/May/11 08:10
• Updated: 11/May/11 17:40
• Resolved: 11/May/11 17:39

Description

In my environment, this is what's going on:

1. framework is started with start level 1.
2. bundles are installed and assigned start level varying from 2 to 4.
3. framework's start level is set to 5.
4. another bundle is installed and is assigned start level 5. This bundle is then started.

Immediately I see Bundle.STARTED event for the last bundle with start level 5 is fired. While trying to understand why certain bundles are getting started earlier than bundles with lower start levels, I stepped into Felix and found the following code:

// Check to see if the bundle's start level is greater than the
// the framework's active start level.
// TODO: STARTLEVEL - Technically, this is not correct since we could be in the
// middle of a framework start level change and we might not have yet
// reached the target start level, but we will activate the bundle anyway.
// This means the bundle will be running in a higher start level temporarily
// until the start level thread catches up.
if (bundle.getStartLevel(getInitialBundleStartLevel()) > m_targetStartLevel)
{
// Throw an exception for transient starts.
if ((options & Bundle.START_TRANSIENT) != 0)

{ throw new BundleException( "Cannot start bundle " + bundle + " because its start level is " + bundle.getStartLevel(getInitialBundleStartLevel()) + ", which is greater than the framework's start level of " + m_targetStartLevel + "."); }

// Ignore persistent starts.
return;
}

The above code compares against "target start level" as opposed to the "currently active start level". The comment indicates that it is a known issue, so if there is already a bug filed to this extent, please close this one as duplicate. It pretty much makes it difficult to use start level service reliably.