title: Headless eclipse managed by Jenkins to run OSGi application server
body: <p>we would like to adapt our Jenkins CI roundtrip as it takes to long (late feedback).</p>
  
  <p>The current flow looks like described below:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>OSGi server bundles are checked out and build with ant.</li>
  <li>the OSGi bundles are packaged to be used on linux distros.</li>
  <li>a server is set up to install the above packages and to run HTTP interface tests (integration tests) against it.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>We would like to get rid of creating the linux packages and to install a server with these packages as this consumes most of the time.</p>
  
  <p>Instead we would like to execute the existing tests against a headless eclipse which is running the server (based on compiled jars or imported projects if possible) managed by Jenkins CI.</p>
  
  <p>Now some questions: </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Is it possible to run a headless eclipse within Jenkins (I think so as it is just executing a java application)?</li>
  <li>Is it possible (and does it makes sense) to have an eclipse instance permanently running and to get used from more than one job? So we have to only update the jars/imported projects that have been changed ... or</li>
  <li>do we have to extract eclipse and set it up each test run?</li>
  <li>Is it possible to import projects within the headless eclipse or do we have to throw compiled jars into its installation?</li>
  <li>Are there any other ways to get HTTP interface tests executed against a running server we are currently not thinking about?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Thanks a lot!</p>