Maven dependency resolving in multi module project - maven

I have a question about how the Maven dependency resolving mechanism is working in a multi module project.
Normally I only use 'mvn clean install' when I build my multi module projects and my assumption was that if any module in the project needs a previous module, dependency will be resolved by going local repository and loading the corresponding 'jar'.
For project internal reason, I have to use 'mvn clean compile,' this command naturally does not create any 'jar' while 'install' is not there. So here I started wondering, how the dependency resolution for a multi module project works, while jar' is not created but project still able to see the changes from the previous builds. Does the target directories used for dependency management?
Or for 'mvn clean compile' target directory used but for 'mvn clean install' the local repository.
Can anybody explain me how the dependency resolution works in a 'multi module' project.
Thx for answers.....

I think you will understand better if you look at https://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-the-lifecycle.html
There is a life cycle in the process of building the jar. The compile target will compile the code and create a complete classes folder in your target directory. This target will resolve all your dependencies in your poms and download any dependencies to your local repo, not already there.
The install target will create the jar from the classes directory and install it in your local repository.
I really think you will need to run the install target to get anything useful.

Maven is made of separate components.
There a component that deal with a given module and among other things try to get its dependencies. It ALWAYS get the dependencies from the local repository, eventually after having downloaded such dependencies. If the dependencies are not there and can't be dowloaded, it will fail. Eventually the module will create its own artifact that it will publish to the local repo.
Then there a compoment that when you ask it to build several maven modules, for example calling mvn at the root of a project does order the various module use the dependencies to find the best ordering for the build so that if a given module depend on another, it will be build after the module it depend on. It then call the previous compoent I described, building each module in order.
In all cases, a given module dependencies are always taken from the local repo. The expectation is that the previous modules that were built before actually pushed their artifact to the local repo typically with the mvn install but you could force it do it at any step thanks to proper configuration (may not be a good idea).
In all case if the previous component jar was not built and put into the repo, there no way such jar can be added in the classpath for the next module to be compiled.
Doing compile only on multiple projets isn't going to be any useful.

Related

How does Maven handle dependencies between modules?

According to the Maven lifecycle, mvn install will "install the package into the local repository, for use as a dependency in other projects locally". The local repository then stores all the jars that I downloaded remotely.
My modules have dependencies with other modules. When I run mvn package, nothing is stored in my local repository, but the dependencies appear to be fulfilled. So how does Maven handle the inter-module dependencies? Does Maven refer to the jars of each module from the built target directories or does it fetch them from another location?
Corey,
You are correct, going strictly by Maven docs implies mvn compile on:
parent_pom/
subA/
pom.xml
subB/
pom.xml # depends on subA
should fail since subA hasn't been pushed out to the local repo.
What's happening under the hood is that Maven uses the reactor to trick the build into looking into target dir of earlier submodules on the same build.
Beyond the scope of this particular question, the maven-reactor-plugin is one of the most opaque parts of Maven, but also one of the most powerful if you master it. You would do well to read up on it.
Hope that helps.
It depends on the phase you're executing. Before compile, Maven will fail, since there are no classes compiled. Between compile and package, the target/classes is used. For package and later, the target/artifactId-version.jar is used.

Maven: how can I skip building artifacts which exist in central repo?

My situation: I have project which contains several Maven modules. I make changes to one of them. Suddenly I find out, that my project is no longer possible to be built because of the errors in other modules. To fix this I need to run SVN UPDATE and rebuilt the project.
My assumption: probably, during the build process of my module some of the artifacts are taken from central repository and have the most newest version, while others are still outdated and taken from my local repo.
A question: I don't want to rebuild my project each time someone updates ANOTHER Maven module. I want to download the already built artefacts from the central repository without rebuilding them by myself. Is it possible?
You can tell Reactor which modules to build. In your case when you only change a single module and want to speed up the build you can pass -pl (Project Location) parameter to maven. For example:
mvn -pl module-with-changes
That will build single module, while taking other dependencies from your local Maven Repository or download from Central (whatever is the latest). That said, if you already ran mvn install for whole project and other artifacts have not been updated in Central repository, then Maven will see your local artifacts as latest and will not re-download them.
Another issue you might get with -pl parameter is when other modules in your project depend on the module that you are building. If there is a problem in dependent module you will not see it by building only the dependency model. To avoid that you can pass -amd (Also Make Dependents). Like this:
mvn -pl module-with-changes -amd
That will trigger the build for module-with-changes + modules that depend on module-with-changes + their dependents.
You can get more info about Reactor parameters from here:
http://www.sonatype.com/people/2009/10/maven-tips-and-tricks-advanced-reactor-options/

Why does maven recognize dependencies on only installed POM files?

I've got a project with Maven in which one subproject (A) wants to depend on another subproject (B) which uses "pom" packaging.
If I do this the straightforward way, where A specifies a dependency on B with <type>pom</type>, things work perfectly if I do "mvn install", but if I run any phase earlier than install, such as mvn compile or mvn package, then it fails while trying to build A: it goes looking for B's pom in the repository, and doesn't find it.
I don't really want this pom in the repository, because it's part of our active source code and changes frequently.
For all the jar-packaged projects we build, it seems to work fine to keep them out of the repository, build with mvn package, and Maven knows how to find all the dependencies in the source and build trees it manages without resorting to the repository; however for the pom-packaged project it always wants to go to the repository.
A couple things I learned while trying to understand this:
Maven best practices encourage you to use pom-packaged projects to group dependencies, but with the added step of "mvn install" on the POM project
Maven lifecycle documentation says "a project that is purely metadata (packaging value is pom) only binds goals to the install and deploy phases"; maybe this is why the POM project is invisible as a dependency target unless I invoke the install phase? I tried binding the compiler plugin to the compile phase and this didn't seem to help.
Is there a way that I can specify the POM subproject as a dependency of another subproject in the same parent project, without installing the POM project to the repository?
It isn't purely a question of which goals are bound to which lifecycle phases for POM projects. If it were, then binding the "package" goal would solve the problem.
When building a multi-module project, Maven reads the POMs of all modules to determine dependencies between modules, so that it can build the depended-upon modules before the depending modules. It's able to achieve this even when running the "package" goal (such that the depended-upon modules are not yet in the local repository).
Therefore, the code that constructs the classpath for builds must be managing several cases, notably:
extra-project jar dependency, where it looks for the POM in the local repository, handles its dependencies, and adds the POM's jar to the classpath
extra-project pom dependency, where it looks for the POM in the local repository and handles its dependencies
intra-project jar dependency, where it looks for the POM within the project tree, handles its dependencies, and adds that module's target/classes folder to the classpath
intra-project pom dependency, where for some reason it doesn't look for the POM within the project tree, and therefore doesn't handle it's dependencies.
Notice the asymmetry in the last two cases, as compared to the first two.
I can see two solutions to your problem. One is to file a bug report, or rather a request to change the behaviour (since it's obviously intentional), perhaps only for the case of intra-project dependencies on multi-module projects. Or indeed propose a patch. But since the behaviour is intentional, you might meet a refusal. In the best of cases, you're in for a long wait. (I'd vote for your bug report though - I've been stung by that same behaviour, in a different context.)
The other solution is simply to run an install on your project. I don't really understand why you don't want the POM project in your repository: if needs be, you can use a snapshot repository, where it doesn't matter if things change frequently, to avoid polluting your main repository.
Configuring maven-install-plugin to run during the compile phase, and copy the relevant pom.xml to the repository, seems to accomplish what I wanted as far as Maven itself is concerned, though m2eclipse still is not happy (it throws "failed to read artifact descriptor" errors with no additional description for the pom.xml that has a dependency on the other POM project).

Maven repository archive including build/plugin dependencies

My Client wants to be able to build our project from source but does not want to connect to the internet to get any dependencies for the build. Note this will include plugin dependencies.
My proposal is that we provide the client with an archive containing all the dependencies in the correct Maven repo file structure, including checksums and meta information. They can then use this as an internal maven repo.
I have configured the maven-assembly-plugin to create such an archive, however it doesn't include all the build/plugin dependencies that their Maven will require to perform the build.
Does anyone know of a way to include build time dependencies in the archive, or can suggest another way to grab these dependencies and wrap them up in the correct structure.
Many thanks,
Pat
On a clean repository, you can run mvn dependency:go-offline. This will download all the plugins and dependencies relevant to the project. You can verify that this is good by doing an offline build (mvn -o clean install).
Once this works fine, you can create an archive of the repository and the sources and pass it on.
Have you taken a look into the maven-dependency-plugin and furthermore i would suggest to do a complete compile and package and after that you can package the local repository from that user ($HOME/.m2/repository). Than you have everything which is needed to do a full compile etc.
Try mvn dependency:copy-dependencies. This will copy all the dependencies to a directory target\dependency.
However, I'm not certain whether this includes the dependencies necessary to build, as well and those necessary to install the compiled output.

How do I get Maven to check if source code has changed before deciding a dependency is resolved?

Maven does a lot of neat things, but I find my self having to "mvn clean" far more often than I would like. It quits doing its dependency resolution/up-to-date check as soon as it finds the jar file for foo-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT in my local repository, even if the source code for that jar has changed. Having to purge everything (or go through each of the affected directories myself) every time I make a change in the next directory over is getting old.
I want a way to flag my intra-project module dependencies to tell Maven "Hey, this is built locally so don't use the foo.jar from ~/.m2 until you've checked that foo's sources haven't changed and rebuilt it if necessary." This is way easy in Ant, but I haven't figured out the Maven way to to it.
In a multi module build that is set up correctly it will just do what you want fine. This is referred to a reactor build. It just depends a bit on your setup.
If you have separate projects it will always get its dependencies from the local repo so you will have to make sure they get there by building them. You can either do that manually or create a multi module pom that ties things together.
The project which creates the foo-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT should do a
mvn deploy
everytime it has changed something. And than you will be able to get the changes simply by doing an other mvn clean compile in the project which use the foo-0.1.0-SNAPTSHOT as dependency.

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