How do I install offline addons with a .kar file?

[davosian (Dennis)]

In an attempt to use the latest add-on version into the latest OH2 snapshot, I downloaded the openhab-addons-2.x.x.xx.kar file as well. How do I go about installing it? Can you point me to the section in the manual or has this not been documented yet in which case I would need a quick how-to?

Thank you!

Dennis

[rsstephens (Russell Stephens)]

Hello Dennis,

Here is a link for Linux. For Windows just copy the KAR files to the addons directory, typically C:\openhab2\addons\.

[davosian (Dennis)]

Thanks a lot for the link. Since I am using OH2 on a Mac, I was following that section of the installation guide and just realized that information about add-on installation is missing in there: http://docs.openhab.org/installation/macosx.html

It would probably be helpful to include a hint about add-ons under macOS in the installation guide.

Since for macOS, everything resides in one installation folder, I assume that I need to put my .kar file in here (for the RC1 release):
openhab-2.0.0.RC1/addons/

In order to test this, I disabled the setting Configuration --> System --> Add-on Management --> Access Remote Repository and rebooted OH2 RC1. To my surprise, I still found all add-ons listed and ready to be installed. When I then added the .kar file into the addons folder, nothing seemed to have changed and no log message to be found in the karaf console.

I now assume that the addons are already bundled into the macOS artifact. If this is the case, how do I go about updating them other than downloading a completly fresh release (which probably is a good idea anyways to make sure add-ons and the rest of the framework are in sync)? When would I use a .kar file at all? I only see a benefit in reducing the installation footprint, but no more.

Thanks

[davosian (Dennis)]

I found the answers to my missing link in this forum post:

A single distro from now on!

All, Today we again have a major update of the openHAB distro. I worked heavily on a bigger refactoring during the last days, which resulted in a single distro, so that users no longer have to choose between online and offline distro. You can find the snapshot builds on our Jenkins at Cloudbees - it is now simply called openhab-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT.zip/tar.gz. If you download this, it will behave the same way as the online distro before, i.e. it does not include any add-ons, but will load them on d…

There are no more online or offline distros, instead you can put .kar files into the addons folder as mentioned by @rsstephens which allows you to turn off remote repository access. However, the list of addons is probably cached and therefore still visible even if you turn off online access.