Creating a self-contained source release with Maven

Question

Up until now we used Ant in my company. Whenever we wanted to send the application to the client we run a special Ant script that packaged all our source code with all jar libraries and Ant itself along with a simple batch file.

Then the client could put the files on a computer with no network access at all (and not even Ant) and run the batch file. As long as the computer had a valid JDK the batch script would compile all the code using the jars and create a WAR/EAR that would finally be deployed by the client on the application server.

Lately we migrated to Maven 2. But I haven't found a way to do the same thing. I have seen the Maven assembly plugin but this just creates source distributions or binary ones. Our scenario is actually a mix since it contains our source code but binary jars of the libraries we use (e.g. Spring, Hibernate)

So is it possible to create with Maven a self-contained assembly/release/package that one can run in a computer with no network access at all??? That means that all libraries should be contained inside.

Extra bonus if Maven itself is contained inside as well, but this is not a strict requirement. The final package should be easily compiled by just one command (easy for a system administrator to perform).

I was thinking of writing my own Maven plugin for this but I suspect that somebody has already encountered this.

Answer 1

Perhaps an answer that I submitted for a similar question could be of some assistance. See Can maven collect all the dependant jars for a project to help with application deployment? The one piece missing is how to include the source code in the assembly. I have to imagine that there is some way to manage that with the assembly plugin. This also doesn't address the inclusion of Maven in the distribution.

What was the reason for moving from Ant to Maven? It sounds like you had everything worked out well with the Ant solution, so what is Maven buying you here?

If it is just dependency management, there are techniques for leveraging Maven from Ant that give you the best of both worlds.

Answer 2

the source plugin will give you a jar containing the source of a probject "source:jar". you could then use the assembly plugin to combine the source jars from your internal projects (using the sources to reference these source jars) and the binary jars from the external projects into one distribution.

however, as for turning this into a compilable unit, i have no suggestions. you could certainly bundle maven, but you'd need to create a bundle containing all the plugins you need to build your project! i don't know of any existing tool to do that.

Answer 3

You might try this approach:

• Use mvn ant:ant to create ant build scripts from a maven project
• Make sure ant is a project dependency
• Use the assembly to build an ant
  system

or plan b:

• Use mvn ant:ant to create ant build scripts from a maven project
• Make sure ant is a project dependency
• Write a "bootstrap class" to call Ant and run the build
• Use appassembler to build a scripted build and install environment

In plan b, you'd write scripts to set up a source tree someplace from the packaged source jars, and then use the appassembler build bat or sh scripts to call the bootstrap and build via ant. Your bootstrap can do anything you need to do before or after the build.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

This is how I do it... on the build part of the pom add in this:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-source-plugin</artifactId>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <id>attach-sources</id>
                    <phase>verify</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>jar</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

And then on the profiles section add this bit in:

<profiles>
        <profile>
            <id>release</id>
            <build>
                <plugins>
                    <plugin>
                        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                        <artifactId>maven-source-plugin</artifactId>
                        <executions>
                            <execution>
                                <goals>
                                    <goal>jar</goal>
                                </goals>
                            </execution>
                        </executions>
                    </plugin>
                </plugins>
            </build>
        </profile>
    </profiles>

And when I do a maven install it builds the jar and also checks in a jar of the source.

Answer 5

From your dev environment, if you include the following under build plugins

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <descriptorRefs>
            <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
        </descriptorRefs>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

and invoke mvn assembly:assembly, you would get yourApp-version-with-dependencies.jar in the target folder. This is a self-sufficient jar, and with a Main-class MANIFEST.MF entry, anybody can double click and run the application.