5. Manifest Templates

5.1 Introduction

A manifest template is a file that Bundlor uses during the generation of OSGi-compliant manifest entries in a JAR's manifest. The format of the manifest template is the same as that of a standard Java manifest file, i.e. a series of 'key: value' pairs.

From this template, Bundlor recognizes a specific set of directives and uses them to generate the OSGi-compliant manifest entries. Bundlor will also add any other headers that are specified in the template to the generated manifest. This is typically used to specify things like the bundle's symbolic name and version.

You can also specify property placeholders, or variables, in your manifest template that Bundlor substitutes with real values at runtime. With this feature, your manifest templates become more dynamic and useful across a variety of your projects. A particularly useful use case for this feature is to tell Bundlor to automatically expand versions of imports based on a pattern of your choosing. See Section 5.3, “Specifying property placeholders” for details.