BND(1)

📦
version 5.1.2 · 4 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💅 bnd — the BND(1) era 💅

okay bestie, pull up a chair 🫶 this is the manual page for bnd, living in section 1 of the manual, and it's the one shipped in BND for Debian GNU/Linux. it's giving "swiss army knife but make it OSGi" and honestly? iconic.

✨ NAME ✨

bnd — create and diagnose OSGi bundles. that's the whole vibe. 💖

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

bnd [general-options] [cmd] [cmd-options]

bnd [general-options] <file>.jar

bnd [general-options] <file>.bnd

so like, three whole ways in. general options, then a command, then that command's options. or you just yeet a .jar at it. or you yeet a .bnd file at it. pick your fighter ✨

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

the bnd tool helps you create and diagnose OSGi bundles — it's genuinely so good at this, no cap. the key functions are, and I quote the lore:

  • show the manifest and JAR contents of a bundle
  • wrap a JAR so that it becomes a bundle 🎀
  • create a Bundle from a specification and a class path
  • verify the validity of the manifest entries (the vibe check, basically)

👑 GENERAL OPTIONS 👑

these are the ones you drop before the command, bestie. main character energy.

  • --failok — same as the property --failok. the current run will create a JAR file even if there were errors. yes, even then. it's giving "we ball" 😭
  • --exceptions — will print the exception when the software has ran into a bad exception and bails out. normally only a message is printed. for debugging or diagnostic reasons, the exception stack trace can be very helpful — and lowkey it's the receipts you need 🔥
  • -f, --full — do full
  • -p, --project <string> — identify another project
  • -t, --test — build for test
  • -o, --output <string> — specify the output file path. the default is output.jar in the current directory 🫶

🌈 COMMANDS 🌈

available commands, and there are so many, bestie. here's the full roster, no gatekeeping:

  • action — execute an action on a repo, or if no name is give, list the actions
  • add — add a workspace, or a project or a plugin to the workspace
  • baseline — compare a newer bundle to a baselined bundle and provide versioning advice
  • bash — generate autocompletion file for bash
  • bnd — the swiss army tool for OSGi
  • bootstrap — interactive gogo shell
  • bsn2url — from a set of bsns, create a list of urls if found in the repo
  • build — build a project. this will create the jars defined in the bnd.bnd and sub-builders.
  • buildx — build project, is deprecated but here for backward compatibility
  • bump — bumps the version of a project
  • changes — show the changes in this release of bnd
  • clean — clean a project
  • compile — compile a project or the workspace
  • convert — converter to different formats
  • copy — (no description given, it's just mysterious like that 🙈)
  • create — create jar, used to support backward compatible java jar commands
  • debug — show a lot of info about the project you're in
  • defaults — (no description given, staying enigmatic 💀)
  • deliverables — show all deliverables from this workspace, with their current version and path.
  • diff — diff jars
  • digest — digests a number of files
  • do — execute a file based on its extension. supported extensions are: bnd (build), bndrun (run), and jar (print)
  • eclipse — show info about the current directory's eclipse project
  • ees — show the Execution Environments of a JAR
  • enroute — OSGi enRoute commands to maintain bnd workspaces (create workspace, add project, etc)
  • export — (no description given, classic 🙈)
  • extract — extract files from a JAR file, equivalent jar command x[vf] (syntax supported)
  • find — go through the exports and/or imports and match the given exports/imports globs. if they match, print the file, package and version.
  • flatten — flatten a bundle by expanding all entries on the Bundle-ClassPath
  • grep — grep the manifest of bundles/jar files.
  • info — show key project variables
  • junit — test a project with plain JUnit
  • macro — show macro value
  • maven — Maven bundle command
  • nexus — (no description given, so mysterious 💅)
  • package — package a bnd or bndrun file into a single jar that executes with java -jar <>.jar
  • plugins — (no description given ✨)
  • print — printout the JAR
  • profile — profile management. a profile is a JAR that only contains packages and capabilities
  • project — execute a Project action, or if no parms given, show information about the project
  • release — release this project
  • remote — (no description given 🎀)
  • remove — remove a project or a plugin from the workspace
  • repo — manage the repositories
  • resolve — (no description given, it's got secrets 🔥)
  • run — run a project in the OSGi launcher
  • runtests — run OSGi tests and create report
  • schema — highly specialized function to create an overview of package deltas in ees
  • select — helps finding information in a set of JARs by filtering on manifest data and printing out selected information.
  • settings — set bnd/jpm global variables
  • source — merge a binary jar with its sources. it is possible to specify source path
  • sync — execute a Project action, or if no parms given, show information about the project
  • syntax — access the internal bnd database of keywords and options
  • test — test a project according to an OSGi test
  • type — list files int a JAR file, equivalent jar command t[vf] (syntax supported)
  • verify — verify jars
  • version — show version information about bnd
  • view — view a resource from a JAR file.
  • wrap — wrap a jar
  • xref — show a cross references for all classes in a set of jars.
some of these genuinely do not have descriptions in the source. that's not me being lazy, that's just canon bestie 🫶

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 you ate this. go forth and bundle responsibly ✨💖

this was bnd-5.1.2, dated 2026-05-15, from BND for Debian GNU/Linux. periodt. 💅🌈🦋
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