Question

I’ve been following the example on the maven-ear-plugin site that shows how to add third-party libraries to the generated application.xml. However, it does not appear to be working as I expected. Similarly the web module contextRoot is being ignored.

According to the documentation what I am trying to do should be entirely possible.

The context root of a Web module might be customized using the
contextRoot parameter.

Please note that third party libraries (i.e. JarModule) are not
included in the generated application.xml (only ejb-client should be
included in a java entry). However, a jar dependency could be included
in the generated application.xml by specifying the
includeInApplicationXml flag.

I have the following output when it executes the build in my application.xml.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE application PUBLIC
    "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD J2EE Application 1.3//EN"
    "http://java.sun.com/dtd/application_1_3.dtd">
<application>
  <display-name>MyApp.EAR</display-name>
  <module>
    <ejb>MyApp.jar</ejb>
  </module>
  <module>
    <web>
      <web-uri>MyApp.war</web-uri>
      <context-root>/MyApp.Web</context-root>
    </web>
  </module>
</application>

From the following maven configuraton (pom.xml).

...
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.blah</groupId>
<artifactId>MyApp.EAR</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<packaging>ear</packaging>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>maven-ear-plugin</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.7</version>
            <configuration>
                <applicationName>MyApp</applicationName>
                <modules>
                    <ejbModule>
                        <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
                        <artifactId>MyApp.EJB</artifactId>
                    </ejbModule>
                    <webModule>
                        <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
                        <artifactId>MyApp.Web</artifactId>
                        <contextRoot>MyApp</contextRoot>
                    </webModule>
                    <jarModule>
                        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
                        <artifactId>slf4j-simple</artifactId>
                        <includeLibInApplicationXml>true</includeLibInApplicationXml>
                    </jarModule>
                </modules>
                <archive>
                    <manifestEntries>
                        <WebLogic-Application-Version>${weblogic.version}</WebLogic-Application-Version>
                    </manifestEntries>
                </archive>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

<dependencies>
    <!-- web and ejb modules -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
        <artifactId>MyApp.EJB</artifactId>
        <version>1.0</version>
        <type>ejb</type>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
        <artifactId>MyApp.Web</artifactId>
        <version>1.0</version>
        <type>war</type>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>
...

It is immediately obvious that the application.xml is not being generated as I intended.

1. The contextRoot supplied is not correct in the application.xml, instead the default name of MyApp.Web is output instead of the specified MyApp.
2. The org.slf4j jarModule specified is missing entirely from the application.xml.

What am I doing wrong?

Debug from Maven is shown below.

[DEBUG] -----------------------------------------------------------------------
[DEBUG] Goal:          org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-ear-plugin:2.4.2:generate-application-xml (default-generate-application-xml)
[DEBUG] Style:         Regular
[DEBUG] Configuration: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <description>${project.description}</description>
  <displayName>${project.artifactId}</displayName>
  <encoding default-value="UTF-8"/>
  <generatedDescriptorLocation>${project.build.directory}</generatedDescriptorLocation>
  <includeLibInApplicationXml default-value="false"/>
  <project>${project}</project>
  <version default-value="1.3"/>
  <workDirectory>${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}</workDirectory>
</configuration>

P.S. I tried creating the maven-ear-plugin tag, but it would not let me as I am not reputable enough! If someone could create that I would be grateful.

Answer 1

I worked it out, as per usual, it was user error.

Strangely it was producing the EAR file pretty much correctly, even though my plugin wasn’t configured properly.

I replaced…

<groupId>maven-ear-plugin</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>

with…

<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>

Then changed…

<includeLibInApplicationXml>true</includeLibInApplicationXml>

to…

<includeInApplicationXml>true</includeInApplicationXml>

Then suddenly it did what I intended it to do in the first place.

My final pom.xml looked like this as I decided I wanted all jar’s to be included automatically.

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
    <artifactId>MyApp.EAR</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <packaging>ear</packaging>

    <properties>
        <weblogic.version>10.3</weblogic.version>
        <weblogic.version.minor>${weblogic.version}.4</weblogic.version.minor>
        <weblogic.host>***</weblogic.host>
        <weblogic.port>***</weblogic.port>
        <weblogic.username>***</weblogic.username>
        <weblogic.password>***</weblogic.password>
    </properties>

    <build>
        <finalName>MyApp</finalName>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.7</version>
                <configuration>
                    <applicationName>MyApp</applicationName>
          <includeLibInApplicationXml>true</includeLibInApplicationXml>
                    <modules>
                        <ejbModule>
                            <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
                            <artifactId>MyApp.EJB</artifactId>
                        </ejbModule>
                        <webModule>
                            <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
                            <artifactId>MyApp.Web</artifactId>
                            <contextRoot>MyApp</contextRoot>
                        </webModule>
                    </modules>
                    <archive>
                        <manifestEntries>
                            <WebLogic-Application-Version>${weblogic.version}</WebLogic-Application-Version>
                        </manifestEntries>
                    </archive>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>

            <plugin>
                <groupId>com.oracle.weblogic</groupId>
                <artifactId>weblogic-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>10.3.4</version>
                <configuration>
                    <adminurl>t3://${weblogic.host}:${weblogic.port}</adminurl>
                    <user>${weblogic.username}</user>
                    <password>${weblogic.password}</password>
                    <upload>true</upload>
                    <action>deploy</action>
                    <remote>false</remote>
                    <verbose>true</verbose>
                    <source>${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.${project.packaging}</source>
                    <name>${project.build.finalName}</name>
                </configuration>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <phase>install</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>deploy</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>

        </plugins>

        <pluginManagement>
            <plugins>
                <!--This plugin's configuration is used to store Eclipse m2e settings only. It has no influence on the Maven build itself.-->
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.eclipse.m2e</groupId>
                    <artifactId>lifecycle-mapping</artifactId>
                    <version>1.0.0</version>
                    <configuration>
                        <lifecycleMappingMetadata>
                            <pluginExecutions>
                                <pluginExecution>
                                    <pluginExecutionFilter>
                                        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                                        <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
                                        <versionRange>[2.7,)</versionRange>
                                        <goals>
                                            <goal>generate-application-xml</goal>
                                        </goals>
                                    </pluginExecutionFilter>
                                    <action>
                                        <ignore></ignore>
                                    </action>
                                </pluginExecution>
                            </pluginExecutions>
                        </lifecycleMappingMetadata>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </pluginManagement>
    </build>

    <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
      <artifactId>MyApp.EJB</artifactId>
      <version>1.0</version>
      <type>ejb</type>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
      <artifactId>MyApp.Web</artifactId>
      <version>1.0</version>
      <type>war</type>
    </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>