Consideration for OSGi applications when installing CICS Explorer

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As of IBM® CICS Explorer® for Aqua 3.3, IBM CICS® SDK for Enterprise Java™ (Liberty) does not support the WebSphere® Developer Tools (WDT) any more. If you need to build OSGi applications, consider the alternative solutions suggested in this topic.

What will be affected?

OSGi Application Projects (EBA) and web-enabled OSGi Bundle Projects (WAB) that are created by using the OSGi Bundle Project wizard cannot be built in CICS Explorer for Aqua 3.3 or later. An error will occur when such projects are added to a CICS bundle or exported.

How to work around it?

Using the CICS-provided Gradle or Maven plug-ins: Gradle and Maven are popular toolchains that offer dependency management. CICS provides the cics-bundle-gradle and the cics-bundle-maven plug-in for you to build and deploy applications into CICS, including OSGi applications. For more information on the support of Gradle and Maven in CICS, see Maven and Gradle modules section in CICS and Java.
Using CICS Explorer on Eclipse Marketplace: CICS Explorer on Eclipse Marketplace supports the IBM Liberty Developer Tools (LDT), a more recent version of WDT, to build and deploy OSGi applications. For instructions on how to install CICS Explorer and LDT from Eclipse Marketplace, see Installing CICS Explorer from Eclipse Marketplace.