what is wso2 'orbit', 'kernel' and 'platform'?

Question

While working out how to build the wso2 platform from source, I have found many references to the terms 'orbit', 'kernel' and 'platform'.

These terms represent separate code repositories, e.g.

svn co https://svn.wso2.org/repos/wso2/carbon/orbit/trunk/ orbit
svn co https://svn.wso2.org/repos/wso2/carbon/kernel/trunk/ kernel 
svn co https://svn.wso2.org/repos/wso2/carbon/platform/trunk/ platform 

What do these terms represent in functionality and what is their relationship to each other?

Answer 1

• Orbit bundles external third party dependencies which are not maintained by WSO2, but are needed for some products.

• Kernel contains source code for the core/kernel code of the carbon platform upon which each product runs.

• Platform contains the source for the whole carbon platform and all WSO2 products are inside the platform.

When building from source, you would first need to build orbit, then kernel and finally build the platform.

You can also try out building from one of the branches such as 4.0.0 or 4.1.0 branch. The kernel for 4.0.0 is available at

https://svn.wso2.org/repos/wso2/carbon/kernel/branches/4.0.0

Similarly you can get the branch svn locations for orbit and platform as well.

You can build a patch release by going into patch-releases directory and build from there.

For example, if you want to build patch-release version 4.0.6 of platform, go to platform/patch-releases/4.0.6 in your platform checkout and build from there.