maven-remote-resources-plugin vs maven-resources-plugin - maven

I am creating a multi module maven project and want to keep resources (property files, json) in a separate module. Now to import this resource module in other modules, I have two option - either to use maven-resources-plugin or to use maven-remote-resources-plugin. I already have working code wrt maven-resources-plugin but while searching in internet I found post only on maven-remote-resources-plugin which made me question if I am following maven standards on resources use.
And is it worth to move from maven-resources-plugin to maven-remote-resources-plugin?
Any pointers with respect to this is appreciated.

"...want to keep resources (property files, json) in a separate
module"
You can use Maven Remote Resources Plugin Of course to bundle your resources in a single JAR that can be used across.
This plugin is used to retrieve JARs of resources from remote
repositories, process those resources, and incorporate them into JARs
you build with Maven. A very common use-case is the need to package
certain resources in a consistent way across your organization: at
Apache it is required that every JAR produced contains a copy of the
Apache license and a notice file that references all used software in
a given project.
Maven Resource Plugin has its own usage of copying resources within modules when you don't have them located in the default maven path and want to use them explicitly.

Related

Spring Boot Multi Module and Fat jar with Shared Features

Experts,
I need some expert advice on how to approach the below use case in spring boot.
I need to have a maven multi-module approach to my project.
I need to have a single jar as output of the final build process.
There are to be common modules for controllers, data access and other functionality
Other modules are to be created based on functionality domain for eg a module for Payroll, a module for Admin etc etc.
Each domain functional module will then have their own controllers extending the common controller, exception handler and so on.
Each module will also have its own set of thyme leaf pages.
The reason for following such an approach is we have development in phases and we will be rolling out based on functional modules.
Here are the issues that I can sense using this approach.
Where do I add the spring web dependency? If I add to the parent pom - it gets replicated across the children and there will be port conflict issues as each module loads. the same issue will also be there the moment I add it to two child modules.
How do I build the fat jar which has all the jars from all modules and works as the final deployment?
All the text that I read i can't see anything even close to what I am trying to achieve.
AD1. They will not unless you are trying to setup independent application context in each module. Of course you can do that(it might be complicated but I believe it's achievable), but for me it's an overkill. Personally I think it's better to have one application context and rely on scanning components that are present in classpath.
AD2. The structure in maven might be a little bit complicated and overwhelming at first glance but it makes sense. Here's how I see it:
Create a parent module that will aggregate each module in project and will declare library/plugin dependencies for submodules.
Create 1-N shared submodules that will be used in other modules. With come common logic, utils, etc.
Create 1-N submodules that will be handling your business logic
Create an application submodule that creates application context and loads configuration and components from classpath
Create a submodule that will be responsible for packaging process, either to war, jar, uber-jar or whatever else you desire. Maven jar plugin should do that for you. For executable uber-jar, you have dedicated tool from spring.
Now you can choose three ways(these ways I know) of loading your modules.
1. Include some modules in maven build based on the build configuration via maven profiles and let spring IoC container load all the components he finds in the classpath
2. Include all of the modules in maven build and load them depending on spring active profiles - you can think about it as of feature flag. You annotate your components or configuration class with #Profile("XYZ") telling spring IoC container whether to instantiate component or not. You will need (most flexible solution) to provide a property file which tells spring which profiles are active and thus which modules should be loaded
3. Mix of these two above.
Solution 1 pros:
build is faster (modules that are not included will be skipped during build)
final build file is light (modules that are not included are... not included ;))
nobody can run module that is not present
Solution 1 contras:
project descriptor in maven may explode as you might have many different profiles
Solution 2 pros:
it's fairly easy and fun to maintain modules from code
less mess in project descriptor
Solution 2 contras:
somebody can run module that is not intended to be run as it's present in classpath, but just excluded during runtime via spring active profiles
final build file might be overweight - unused code is still present in code
build might take longer - unused code will be compiled
Summary:
It's not easy to build well structured project from scratch. It's much more easier to create a monolith and then split it into modules. It's because if you already created a project, you've probably already identified all the domains and relations between them.
Over past 8 years of using maven, I honestly and strongly recommend using gradle as it's far more flexible than maven. Maven is really great tool, but when it comes to weird customization it often fails as it's build capabilities rely on plugins. You can't write a piece of code on the fly to perform some custom build behaviour while buidling your project, you must have a dedicated plugin for doing that. If such plugin exists it's fine, if it's not you will probably end up writing your own and handling its shipment, so anyone in your company can easily perform project build.
I hope it helps. Have fun ;)

How to download all available artifacts from a specific repository url in build.gradle

I'm working on a multi-module build which is needed to create an artifact from all WSDLs available on an internal repository. But they are a lot and I don't want to make a list of it, because it might be possible that later another WSDL project is created and needs to be included in the list, if that doesn't happen then the final artifact will be incomplete.
So I need to know if there's any way I can tell gradle to fetch artifacts present on a certain path like domain.com/path/to/repo/wsdls/ and fetch all available artifacts from this path.
I was thinking of creating a configuration which then has this specific repository to download from but it seems configuration does not include a repository and will use defined in build.gradle.
Any way to define a download-everything-pattern in dependencies block?
EDIT: Note: WSDL project means soap services in a zip archive

Why is it not recommended to define maven artifact repository URL in pom file? (Azure context, artifact source)

My team is migrating our code to an Azure environment and Microsoft's own article on the subject describes how to use Maven in an Azure environment:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/java/labs/mavenpmvsts/?view=vsts
One of Maven's best practices is to avoid defining repository elements within the pom file and use a repository manager configured within the settings.xml instead.
The Microsoft article instructs otherwise: they say to add the repository url right in the pom file.
I would have been okay with it if the repository element was defined only in the distributionManagement section, but that is not the case. The article defines the url in a repositories element outside of the distribution context.
My understanding of the repository element of the pom.xml file is that it overrides the source of artifacts used for fetching dependencies. The problem I see defining this in the pom file is that it could have adverse effects depending how the library is being reused.
Use case example:
1) Shared library is created with repository url defined in pom
2) Shared library is deployed. POM file containing url and JAR file are published.
3) Artifact repository is moved, renamed or copied, url is changed.
4) Later on, a new application using that shared library is created, but uses the new repository url. The URL in the application pom is now different from the one in the shared library's previously published pom.
Because Maven uses a dependency graph and inheritance, what I would expect to happen is that when we build the new application:
1) maven will read the application pom file and begin exploring the dependency graph by downloading pom files for each of the application's dependencies from the URL found in the application's pom. In this case, the only download is the shared library's pom.
2) maven will explore transitive dependencies and read the shared library's pom. Reading the shared library's pom, the repository section will take precedence over the application's pom in the context of the shared library's dependencies. The shared library's dependencies poms would be downloaded from the old URL.
3) maven will continue like that and download all the pom files until the dependency tree has been built.
4) depending on project configuration, maven will go through the graph it built to download the jars and etc using the same rules.
In this use case, maven would download artifacts from both the old source and the new source. If the old source no longer exists or isn't accessible in this build context, the project cannot be built. This is why it's best to avoid setting repository urls in a pom file.
Or so I thought.
I wrote a scripted demo with local repositories to show my team exactly what would happen and to my surprise, even though Maven does download the shared library's pom file containing a different repository url, the repository tag does not seem to be overriding the one from the application being built. Logs show all artifacts being downloaded from the source specified in the "top" application pom.
So my question to Stack Overflow is two fold:
1) Why am I wrong? Did I misunderstand Maven's inheritance, dependency graph building and behavior?
2) Shouldn't Maven download the shared library's dependencies from the url specified in the repository tag, if specified? I'm sure there are some cases where the artifacts must come from a private repo. (ex: org.geotools)
3) Does anyone have experience setting up Maven on Azure? Did you follow Microsoft's guide or found a way to move repository urls to your settings.xml in an Azure environment?

How to share configuration files across modules in Maven

I am working on a java maven project with several modules.
I am facing issues with sharing configuration files from one module to its dependency.
For instance i have a module named utils which holds a log.properties file and i would like to use it in another module named gui. What is the best practice to do this ?
Currently we put the log.properties in a config directory as Maven standard layout suggest it, and it is not included in the jar file. Is it correct ? Should I put it in resources instead ?
I use assembly plugin to copy it to a common config directory, this works well, but when I try to build each module individually the config file cannot be reached. How can i solve this ?
Thanks for your help,
Pierre.
You should put your configuration in src/main/resources/config/. This way it will be included in the jar by default. The maven convention is that only src/main/java and src/main/resources are contained in the final jar by default.
Making property files directly accessible to other modules is not a good practice. You should provide a service in the module owning the configuration that is the only place where those files are accessed. This service will be able to give configurations to other modules. Otherwise you violate the single responsibility principle.
You can configure maven to include the src/main/config directory in the built artifact by specifying it in the resources section of the pom as described here.

Maven Jetty plugin with endorsed external directory

I have a project with more than an hundred external library dependencies, here we use tomcat with this endorsed jar libs configured on a directory in the server (now is under $CATALINA_HOME/lib/endorsed), so the webapp can access those resources on runtime start.
I wanted to try jetty instead, because tomcat takes too much memory and crashes frequently. Now I'm wondering if there is a parameter to pass on maven-jetty-plugin to specify this jar's folder so as the webapp class loader find them in its classpath.
I've tried extraClasspath in configuration tag, but it seems to load only classes and ignore all jars in the directory I set into (if I pass the full name path of the jar, it is loaded, but I don't want to set every library that I need there).
Thanks in advance for the help
update:I know it's not a standard maven operation, i'm searching for an emergency workaround since this project is very huge and I can't refactor as I want.
But also I expected this feature was not as tricky as it seemed to me at first glance.
You need to pass them as absolute paths, or, alternatively, have them as dependencies of the plugin itself.
What you want to have done goes against Maven's portability principles, so don't expect it to support it.

Resources