Installing Features

The manual way of provisioning Carbon is dropping bundles and configuration files that belong to a feature. This method is not recommended since it can cause errors. Besides, finding the exact set of components and configurating files is a complex task. Components have inter-dependencies with other components. Some components depend on specific versions of other components.

In order to overcome these issues, WSO2 has Equinox P2 integrated with Carbon. It enables user-friendly provisioning capabilities by allowing users to download WSO2 Carbon or any other WSO2 product and simply extend them by installing various features.

If you are on Windows, be sure to point the -Dcarbon.home property in the product's startup script (wso2server.bat) to the product's distribution home (e.g., -Dcarbon.home=C:\Users\VM\Desktop\wso2as-5.2.1). Then, restart the server. If not, you might not be able to install features through the management console.

Follow the instructions below to install new features to any product of the WSO2 products stack.

1. Log on to the management console and click Features in the Configure menu.

2. The Feature Management page opens. The Available Features tab allows you to search for available features in repositories. You can select a repository from the drop-down menu. If there is no added repository, see Managing Feature Repositories to add one.

The following options can be selected.

Show only the latest versions

Some repositories contain multiple versions of features. If you are only interested in the latest versions, select the Show only the latest versions check box.

Group features by category

A feature category is a logical grouping of the features which constitute a particular Carbon-based product. The Group features by category check box enables you to easily view and select the entire list of features of a particular product at once. For example, the features required to install WSO2 Data Services Server is grouped under the Data Service Server feature category as shown below.

Group features

If you clear this check box when finding features, you will see an uncategorized, flat feature list from which individual features can be selected separately.

3. Once the repository and options are selected, click Find Features.

4. You will see a list of all the features. Select the ones you want to add by selecting the relevant check boxes.

Tip

To find a particular feature, you can use the search function. Enter the name of a feature (or a part of the name) and press Enter.

This search will only return available features; excluding the ones already installed.

5. Once done, click Install.

Install features

6. The Install Details window appears. Verify the provided information and click Next.

7. Read and accept the terms of license agreement and click Next.

The installation process starts. It may take a few minutes to download the necessary components.

8. Once the installation process is complete, click Finish and restart the server for the changes to take effect.

9. You can see the functionality added with new features in the management console. For example, the Databases menu shows when the Admin Console feature is installed.

WSO2 databases

View Feature Information

When features of a repository are loaded, you can install them or view the details of particular features. To view the details, click the More Info link associated with each feature. For example,

More information

When the link is clicked, the Feature Information window appears, with the following information:

Name
Identifier
Version
Provider
Description
Copyright
License Agreement

Familiarize yourself with the information and click Back to load the previous page.

It is not possible to install Event and Key Store management features from the P2 repo to ESB481 due to feature conflicts. The carbon/platform/branches/turing/features/repository/4.2.10/pom.xml file has the following entries for the Event feature under the ESB category:

<catFeature>
   <id>org.wso2.carbon.event.server</id>
   <version>4.2.1</version>
</catFeature>
<catFeature>
   <id>org.wso2.carbon.event.common</id>
   <version>${carbon.platform.version}</version>
</catFeature>
<catFeature>
   <id>org.wso2.carbon.event.ui</id>
   <version>${carbon.platform.version}</version>
</catFeature>

While MB has the following entry for the Event feature:

<catFeature>
   <id>org.wso2.carbon.event</id>
   <version>4.2.2</version>
</catFeature>

The difference is that MB has aggregated the Event feature while ESB has separately used the Event features.

The Key Store management feature has the following conflict,

ESB has the following entries:

<catFeature>
   <id>org.wso2.carbon.security.mgt</id>
   <version>4.2.2</version>
 </catFeature>

While MB has the following entries:

<catFeature>
    <id>org.wso2.carbon.security.mgt</id>
    <version>4.2.4</version>
 </catFeature>