This book offers a comprehensive look at using Maven on a project, covering not only the build system itself, but how it is best used in concert with other development infrastructures such as source control, continuous integration and build servers, and an artifact repository. We cover this territory using Subversion, Apache Continuum, and Apache Archiva, respectively, though the concepts learned should apply to other comparable systems.
In many ways, this is the book we've always wanted to write about Maven, and it takes a different approach to the existing Maven titles. Rather than being a reference or documentation for the software, it takes the approach of walking through a single example application and associated infrastructure in the same way that you would develop your own projects. For this purpose, we have crafted the example application Centrepoint—a simple but functional web application composed of several modules that itself interacts with Maven, Continuum, and Archiva.
We believe this book will not only show you how to use Maven, but how to use it effectively, covering concepts and best practices that should endure beyond the current versions of Maven and apply to your development infrastructure and teams in general.
Chapter 1: Maven in a Nutshell is a quick overview of the fundamentals of Maven—from creating a simple Maven project to basic plugin configuration to generating sites and reports. These are demonstrated in an easy to follow step-by-step process. By the end of the chapter, you should be able to apply and use the skills that you have learned to your own project.
Chapter 2: Staying in Control with Archiva introduces you to Archiva and its role in building software. You will learn the basics of installing and configuring it for internal use. It also shows you how Archiva complements Maven and how they can be used together efficiently.
Chapter 3: Building an Application Using Maven delves into the details on how to accurately set up and build an application using Maven. The Centrepoint project is introduced in this chapter. This is the sample application that will be used for the hands-on demonstrations throughout the book. You will see how Maven enforces convention over configuration while building the Centrepoint project.
Chapter 4: Application Testing with Maven goes through the various types of automated tests that can be executed from Maven. This includes unit testing, integration testing, and testing web applications using Selenium to name a few. Instrumenting tests, implementing test coverage, and reporting of test results are also covered.
Chapter 5: Reporting and Checks shows how to configure Maven to generate project reports and incorporate them in the generated site. This chapter also tackles the basics on enforcing certain rules or checks on your code such as conforming to code styles and standards, and finding common bugs in the code while building your application.
Chapter 6: Useful Maven Plugins discusses some of the Maven plugins, both from Apache Maven and from the Codehaus Mojo project, that may be of great help in your Maven builds. The functionality of these plugins range from keeping track of the source revision number for the build to executing external applications as part of the build. You will learn to identify when to use each plugin and how to configure them properly to address your need.
Chapter 7: Maven Best Practices illustrates the effective usage of Maven. You will learn tips and tricks for setting up your development environment to managing your project dependencies to making your builds portable and reproducible. By the end of this chapter, you should be able to apply what you've learned to your next project, or even to your current one.
Chapter 8: Continuum: Ensuring the health of your source code highlights the importance of continuous integration in software development through Continuum. It covers basic installation and set up, adding projects to Continuum, and effective configuration and build scheduling, at the same time demonstrating how it works in accordance with Maven and also with Archiva.
Chapter 9: Continuum in Depth deals with releasing projects using both Maven and Continuum. The different phases involved in the release process will be covered along with a bit of troubleshooting on the side. You will also learn about building multiple projects simultaneously in Continuum through parallel and distributed builds.
Chapter 10: Archiva in a Team gives you the more advanced features of Archiva and demonstrates how to configure it for use in a team. You will learn how to control access to a repository, how to take advantage of repository groups, how to make use of its reporting feature, and how to maintain your Archiva repositories.
Chapter 11: Archetypes covers Maven archetypes. It discusses some of the archetypes available—what their purpose is and what the generated project from each archetype looks like. You will also create a custom archetype specifically for the Centrepoint application, which will be used in the last chapter.
Chapter 12: Maven, Archiva, and Continuum in the Enterprise shows how to configure Archiva and Continuum effectively for use in the corporate environment. Tips on how to set up projects and repositories across multiple projects with respect to controlling who and what can be accessed by different teams covers the first half of the chapter. The second part demonstrates the web services feature of both applications by creating plugins for the Centrepoint application and using them to get information from Archiva and Continuum.
Appendix A: Troubleshooting Maven provides techniques for troubleshooting Maven. Incorrect POM or settings configuration, and dependency and download problems are a few of the usual suspects that will be covered here.
Appendix B: Recent Maven Features discusses the new features in Maven 2.1 and above. These features include password encryption, reactor project selection, and parallel downloads of dependencies.
Appendix C: Migrating Archiva and Continuum Data illustrates how to migrate data in Archiva and Continuum when upgrading to a higher version. How to switch to a different database from the built-in one is also discussed.
You need to have the following software installed:
Java 5 or above
Subversion 1.4
An outgoing mail server for some examples
We will be installing the following applications throughout the book:
Apache Maven 2.2
Apache Archiva 1.2
Apache Continuum 1.3
This book is for Java developers who want to get started with Apache Maven. If you are tasked with build automation in your company, this book will help you to quickly and easily get started with Maven in order to improve the efficiency of your builds.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>${project.groupId}</groupId>
<artifactId>model</artifactId>
<version>${project.version}</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<forkMode>never</forkMode>
</configuration>
</plugin>Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
distribution$ mvn integration-test
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
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