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This guide assumes you are using Maven 2.0.4 or later (http://maven.apache.org)

Getting started

Before we get too far ahead, it is important to know some basics concepts of Maven. The most important thing to understand is that unlike Ant, Maven has no concept of procedural tasks that get run. Instead, Maven has a concept of a build lifecycle in which plugins (somewhat similar to Ant asks) can attach to. When you execute a maven build, you specify a point in the lifecycle that you want the project built up to. The phase compile comes before test, and test comes before package, and package comes before install.

Installing

The install phase simply means that maven should build up the project ("package"), and then install it to your local repository (found in ~/.m2/repository). There is can be used by any other maven project you build. To run a basic install, simply invoke:

> mvn install

That's it! Maven will download all dependencies it needs, run all unit tests, package up the jars, and then install the jars locally. You can also find the jars in the target directories of each module. For example, action/target/action-2.0-SNAPSHOT.jar would be where the main jar is built.

Some dependencies, such as JavaMail and Activation, can't be downloaded automatically due to license restrictions. Fortunately, Maven gives you a nice error message showing you how to install these to your local repository. Simply download the required jar from Sun's website and then use the command supplied by the error message to install it. You can then try the build again.

Other phases

There are other phases that can be useful when working with Maven. The package phase will just jar (or war) up the modules. The test phase will only run the unit tests. The compile phase will only build the source code (but not the test sources). And the clean phase will remove all artifacts, typically the entire target directory.

Build profiles

The next step to building Struts with Maven is to understand build profiles. These are simply slightly different configurations for the build. The following profiles are available:

Profile

Description

default

Builds action-api, action, and all sample webapps

xwork

Includes the xwork build

thirdParty

Includes additional modules that cannot be part of the default build due to Apache rules

In the previous example, we didn't specify a profile so the default profile was used. However, most developers will want to use additional profiles as they work on both XWork and other modules, such as the JasperReports integration.

Specify a profile is as simple as:

> mvn -Pprofile ...

That is, if you wanted to build all the third-party add-ons not included with the default build, you'd simply do:

> mvn -PthirdParty package

Building IDE project files

Tips

  • offline mode
  • skipping tests
  • mirror
  • having to run "mvn install" sometimes before the build works
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