Maven: local development deploy vs bundling for distribution

Question

Bear with me, I'm migrating from Ant to Maven2: I think I've hit one of those little things that was easy in Ant, but not so in Maven...

How do I handle the difference between a local deployment vs. creating an archive/bundle for distribution to another machine?

Let's assume my project's output is an EAR plus some additional config files. A developer that is actively working on the project will need to deploy and re-deploy frequently to his local app-server (say JBoss), while an Integration Engineer that is building for QA/production will need only to create the final archive assembly (tar/gz).

In Ant we had two targets for this: "dev-deploy" and "bundle". Both do a complete build, but differ in the final step: "dev-deploy" copies the EAR and config files to the respective local folders, while "bundle" just puts the EAR & config files in a tar.gz assembly.

How do you do this in Maven?

I've seen that the assembly plugin can create either archives (tar, gz, etc.) or exploded directories (from the same assembly descriptor). I can invoke either assembly:assembly or assembly:directory, but for the latter, how do I copy the final output to the local JBoss deployment folders? From a related post it seems that ad-hoc copying of files is not really what Maven is about, so an antrun copy is probably the most appropriate?

Finally, since the type of assembly may differ depending on who invokes it, it doesn't seem wise to bind assembly to the build lifecycle, not so? But this means that a developer will always need to invoke 'mvn package' followed by 'mvn assembly:directory' to rebuild and test a change. Conversely, an Integration Engineer will always need to run 'mvn package' followed by 'mvn assembly:assembly' to create the distributable archive. I was hoping for a one-command solution for each, or should I just script it?

Answer 1

In Ant we had two targets for this: "dev-deploy" and "bundle". Both do a complete build, but differ in the final step: "dev-deploy" copies the EAR and config files to the respective local folders, while "bundle" just puts the EAR & config files in a tar.gz assembly.

Not sure what you mean by respective local folders about "dev-deploy" but this sounds like what mvn pacakge is doing and "bundle" indeed sounds like a maven assembly.

I've seen that the assembly plugin can create either archives (tar, gz, etc.) or exploded directories (from the same assembly descriptor). I can invoke either assembly:assembly or assembly:directory, but for the latter, how do I copy the final output to the local JBoss deployment folders? From a related post it seems that ad-hoc copying of files is not really what Maven is about, so an antrun copy is probably the most appropriate?

I guess that we are talking about the Integration Engineer's tasks here. As you didn't explain what the "bundle" contains exactly, what the target application server is (my understanding is that you are using JBoss for QA/production too but, again, this is a guess), if this bundle has to be deployed automatically, it's hard to imagine all solutions and/or alternatives to antrun. But indeed, to copy/move/unzip/whatever the assembly, the maven antrun plugin is a candidate.

Finally, since the type of assembly may differ depending on who invokes it, it doesn't seem wise to bind assembly to the build lifecycle, not so? But this means that a developer will always need to invoke 'mvn package' followed by 'mvn assembly:directory' to rebuild and test a change. Conversely, an Integration Engineer will always need to run 'mvn package' followed by 'mvn assembly:assembly' to create the distributable archive. I was hoping for a one-command solution for each, or should I just script it?

My understanding was that the Integration Engineer was building the bundle. Why would a developer need the bundle? This is confusing... Anyway, I don't really need the details to think of an answer. You could actually declare the maven assembly plugin into specific build profiles, one for development and one for integration, and bind either the single or the directory-single mojos to the project's build lifecycle in each profile. This would allow to use only one command and avoid any scripting (really, don't go this way).