The Future of ServiceMix

In the ServiceMix forum there is an interesting debate going on about the Future of ServiceMix. I’ve collected some quotes from the thread. I know it is sometimes dangerous to cite people without giving the full context, but I think it helps to get a rough idea about the direction in which ServiceMix is heading. If you are interested in more details please read to original post.

Quotes:

“The idea is really to make ServiceMix the best possible container for deploying Camel based integration.”
 
“This also means that there’s really not much to reuse from smx4, so smx5 would have its own new and dedicated svn area.”
 
“Dropping JBI is already a great step in that direction.”
 
“Additional things that could be pushed inside ServiceMix 5 would be a Tomcat based container deployment option (for those that don’t need OSGi), a new manual similar to what we have in Karaf (maybe reusing parts of it).”
 
“For advanced use cases, we should definitely guide users towards Karaf, but for a set of basic things, just using Tomcat and simple WARs may be the simplest thing that works for them!”
 
“To build the added value I’ve been talking about, we don’t really need the NMR imho.  I’m convinced we can do it directly on top of camel without the need for another layer, mostly using Camel interceptors.   That way, OSGi is not really needed anymore, though it’s still the best way to deploy Camel routes  using Karaf and would remain the main and standlone ServiceMix distribution.”
 
“Providing a way to easily deploy Activiti would definitely be a good thing. I don’t think it should part of the default distribution, as I’d like to keep it as light as possible though.”
 
Here is my personal summary: 
  1. ServiceMix 5 will primarily focus on Camel.
  2. JBI is finally dead.
  3. Karaf and OSGi will represent the primary runtime.
  4. Tomcat will act as an alternative container.
  5. Activiti will not be integrated.

Consequences:

If you develop for ServiceMix 4 today, focus on OSGi and Camel instead of  JBI and ServixMix features since those are the stable parts of ServiceMix.
If you have ServiceMix 3 and JBI solutions in place think about migration towards Karaf and Camel. If you plan to integrate Activiti, make sure the required functionality is not already covered by Camel to avoid unnecessary complexity (see blog post Combining Activiti and Camel).