How to package EAR for GlassFish with Maven? - maven

Question

I want to package one EAR that will be deployed on GlassFish Server Open Source Edition.
Here are the relevant parts of the pom.xml file.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<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>
....
<packaging>ear</packaging>
<dependencies>
....
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.1</version>
<configuration>
<source>1.7</source>
<target>1.7</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.8</version>
<configuration>
<version>6</version>
<defaultLibBundleDir>/lib</defaultLibBundleDir>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
I usually run mvn compile and mvn package in the command terminal. The resulting EAR has the following structure.
EAR/lib/*.jar
EAR/META-INF/application.xml
EAR/META-INF/META-INF.MF
EAR/META-INF/maven/...
The application.xml is
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<application xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/application_6.xsd" version="6">
<display-name>test-app</display-name>
<library-directory>/lib</library-directory>
</application>
If I try to run asadmin deploy test-app.ear to deploy the EAR to GlassFish I get this error.
remote failure: Error occurred during deployment: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; lineNumber: 4; columnNumber: 22; Deployment descriptor file META-INF/application.xml in archive ....
Here I rename application.xml to glassfish-application.xml and change its content to
<!DOCTYPE glassfish-application PUBLIC "-//GlassFish.org//DTD
GlassFish Application Server 3.1 Java EE Application 6.0//EN"
"http://glassfish.org/dtds/glassfish-application_6_0-1.dtd">
<glassfish-application>
<unique-id>67488732739338240</unique-id>
</glassfish-application>
If I rerun asadmin deploy test-app.ear GlassFish recognizes the deployment descriptor but throws the next error that says Application [test-app] contains no valid components.
Here I move all jars from EAR/lib/*.jar to EAR/META-INF/lib/*.jar.
If I now rerun asadmin deploy test-app.ear GlassFish recognizes the EAR as valid and deploys it.
Since I dont want to manually change the EAR every time. How can I configure Maven to
1. Output a valid application.xml or glassfish-application.xml
2. Copy the dependencies not to EAR/lib/ but to EAR/META-INF/lib (if it is really necessary)
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

How can I configure Maven to
Output a valid application.xml or glassfish-application.xml
Copy the dependencies not to EAR/lib/ but to EAR/META-INF/lib (if it is really necessary)
application.xml can be autogenerated by maven-ejb-plugin and for the simple test I would leave it up to plugin
for dependencies copying - it depends what you package in your ear (can be war/jar/...) but in general, it's a good idea, to let maven do it. For the purpose you miss in your pom.xml sections that would refer to modules (war/jar/...) you want to be included in there
moreover I don't see a reason for non-standard libs folder you specified with: <library-directory>
So I'd go for config like the sample present here.
To include the relevant sections in answer:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.8</version>
<configuration>
<version>6</version>
<modules>
<webModule>
<groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
<artifactId>myWar</artifactId>
<bundleFileName>myWarNameInTheEar.war</bundleFileName>
<contextRoot>/myWarConext</contextRoot>
</webModule>
<ejbModule>
<groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
<artifactId>myEjb</artifactId>
<bundleFileName>myEjbNameInTheEar.jar</bundleFileName>
</ejbModule>
</modules>
<displayName>My Ear Name displayed in the App Server</displayName>
<generateApplicationXml>true</generateApplicationXml>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
<!-- Define the versions of your ear components here -->
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
<artifactId>myWar</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<type>war</type>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
<artifactId>myEjb</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<type>ejb</type>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
Please note you need to specify dependencies - for modules, but include those in modules section as well, to have them packaged.
Feel free to ask in case of any further questions.