Packaging and installing Liberty features

You can package and install Liberty features to WebSphere® Application Server Liberty.

About this task

A Liberty feature can be packaged as a subsystem archive, as defined by the OSGi Enterprise specification (5.0). A subsystem archive is a compressed file with an .esa extension that includes the feature manifest and the resource files that constitute the feature. The WebSphere Application Server developer tools will import and export Liberty features by using the subsystem archive format, and features can be installed to a Liberty runtime environment by using the installUtility or featureManager command if the features are in the .esa format.

Procedure

  • You can manually install Liberty features to Liberty.
    • To install the feature to the Liberty kernel, the feature manifest file must be in the ${wlp.install.dir}/lib/features directory and related bundles in the ${wlp.install.dir}/lib directory;
    • To install the feature into the user configuration, the feature manifest file must be in the ${wlp.user.dir}/extension/lib/features directory, and related bundles must be in the ${wlp.user.dir}/extension/lib directory;
    • To install the feature into a product extension, the feature manifest file and related bundles must be in the product extension directory. The product extension is registered in the ${wlp.user.dir}/etc/extension/lib/features directory by using a <extension-name>.properties file. For more information, see Product extension.
  • You can also use the installUtility or featureManager command that is provided in the ${wlp.install.dir}/bin directory to install a Liberty feature if it is packaged as an .esa file.
    • To install a feature as a user feature, use the following command:
      installUtility install my_feature.esa --to=usr
    • To install a feature to a product extension location, use the following command:
      installUtility install my_feature.esa --to=my_extension

    For more information, see installUtility command and featureManager command.