Question

I’m building an application that is composed of two projects: common and theApp.
Now, theApp depends upon common (modelled using a dependency). The tricky thing i’m facing is:

There are XML files in common/src/main/env which will be needed while theApp is running.

To make things more fun, a distribution of run will have this structure:

• bin/ – has scripts
• lib/ – has the jars created by theApp and common
• dependencies/ – has the library jars on which the app depends
• config/ – has the xml files from theApp and common

I’m all done, except that I’m still looking for a way to write a maven goal in theApp‘s POM that can put common‘s XML files in config/.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Harshath

Answer 1

You’ll need the maven assembly and dependency plugins. Create an assembly descriptor in common/src/main/resources/assemblies/config.xml like this:

<assembly>
   <id>config</id>
   <formats>
      <format>zip</format>
   </formats>
   <fileSets>
      <fileSet>
         <directory>${basedir}/src/main/env</directory>
         <outputDirectory>/</outputDirectory>
      </fileSet>
   </fileSets>
   <dependencySets>
      <dependencySet>
         <useProjectArtifact>false</useProjectArtifact>
         <useTransitiveDependencies>true</useTransitiveDependencies>
         <outputDirectory>config/</outputDirectory>
      </dependencySet>
   </dependencySets>
</assembly>

Then use it in your pom like:

<build>
  <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
           <descriptorRefs>
              <descriptorRef>config</descriptorRef>
           </descriptorRefs>
        </configuration>
        <executions>
           <execution>
              <phase>package</phase>
              <goals>
                 <goal>attached</goal>
              </goals>
           </execution>
        </executions>
        <dependencies>
           <dependency>
              <groupId>my.groupid</groupId>
              <artifactId>common</artifactId>
              <version>my.version</version>
           </dependency>
        </dependencies>
     </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

This’ll create an attached artifact common-config.zip, which you can expand with the maven-dependency-plugin inside theApp’s pom.xml, putting the files in theApp’s target/config directory (which may not be suitable, depending on how you’re creating your final distribution):

 <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <id>unpack-dependencies</id>
        <phase>package</phase>
        <goals>
            <goal>unpack</goal>
        </goals>
        <configuration>
          <artifactItems>
            <artifactItem>
              <groupId>my.groupid</groupId>
              <artifactId>common</artifactId>
              <version>my.version</version>
              <type>zip</type>
              <overWrite>true</overWrite>
              <includes>*</includes>
              <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/config</outputDirectory>
            </artifactItem>
          </artifactItems>
        </configuration>
      </execution>
    </executions>
  </plugin>

Some of this is documented in http://www.sonatype.com/books/mvnref-book/reference/assemblies.html …