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The camel:run goal of the Camel Maven Plugin is used to run your Camel Spring configurations in a forked JVM from Maven. A good example application to get you started is the Spring Example.

cd examples/camel-example-spring
mvn camel:run

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How this works is that the plugin will compile the source code in the maven project, then boot up a Spring ApplicationContext using the XML confiuration files on the classpath at

META-INF/spring/*.xml

If you want to boot up your Camel routes a little faster, you could try the camel:embedded instead.

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From Camel 2.10 onwards the camel:run plugin also supports running a Blueprint application, and by default it scans for OSGi blueprint files in

OSGI-INF/blueprint/*.xml

You would need to configure the camel:run plugin to use blueprint, by setting useBlueprint to true as shown below

      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
        <artifactId>camel-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <useBlueprint>true</useBlueprint>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>    

This allows you to boot up any Blueprint services you wish - whether they are Camel-related, or any other Blueprint.

From Camel 2.17 onwards the camel:run goal is able to auto detect if camel-blueprint is on the classpath or there is blueprint XML files in the project, and therefore you no longer have to configure the useBlueprint option.

You can use the applicationContextUri configuration to specify an explicit blueprint XML file, such as:

      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
        <artifactId>camel-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <useBlueprint>true</useBlueprint>
          <applicationContextUri>myBlueprint.xml</applicationContextUri>
          <!-- ConfigAdmin options which have been added since Camel 2.12.0 -->
          <configAdminPid>test</configAdminPid>
          <configAdminFileName>/user/test/etc/test.cfg</configAdminFileName>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>    

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You would need to configure the camel:run plugin to use CDI, by setting useCDI to true as shown below

      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
        <artifactId>camel-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <useCDI>true</useCDI>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>    

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You should add the CDI container of your choice (e.g. Weld or OpenWebBeans) to the dependencies of the camel-maven-plugin such as in this example.

From Camel 2.17 onwards the camel:run goal is able to auto detect if camel-cdi in on the classpath, and therefore you no longer have to configure the useCDI option.

From the source of Camel you can run a CDI example via

cd examples/camel-example-cdi
mvn compile camel:run

About DOT generation

camel:run will by default try to run dot generation to generate Visualisation diagrams.
This feature could in some rare cases cause the application to hang, so its by default disabled in Camel 1.6.1 or newer.

Logging the classpath

From Camel 2.10 onwards you can configure whether the classpath should be logged when camel:run executes. In older releases the classpath is always logged.
This can be verbose and noisy, so from Camel 2.10 onwards, the classpath is not logged anymore. You can enable this in the configuration usingTo enable it you should configure the useDot parameter:

      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
        <artifactId>camel-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <useDot>true<<logClasspath>true</useDot>logClasspath>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>    

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Using live reload of XML files

From Camel 2.1019 onwards you can configure whether the classpath should be logged when camel:run executes. In older releases the classpath is always logged.
This can be verbose and noisy, so from Camel 2.10 onwards, the classpath is not logged anymore. You can enable this in the configuration using:the plugin to scan for XML file changes and trigger a reload of the Camel routes which are contained in those XML files.

      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
        <artifactId>camel-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <logClasspath>true</logClasspath>
        <fileWatcherDirectory>src/main/resources/META-INF/spring</fileWatcherDirectory>
  </configuration>
      </plugin>    
</plugin>

Then the plugin watches this directory. This allows you to edit the source code from your editor and save the file, and have the running Camel application pickup those changes.

Notice its only changes of Camel routes, eg <routes>, or <route> which is supported. You cannot change Spring or OSGi Blueprint <bean> elements.