Apache Maven 2: Effective Implementation Sample Chapter

When I announced the release of the book last week, I neglected to mention that there is a sample chapter online. It is available from the book’s site, but can be directly downloaded as a PDF:

• Chapter 6 – Useful Maven Plugins

There is also an excerpt online if you don’t like PDF.

While it does stand alone, the examples are also worked in to the context of the sample project used throughout the book where appropriate.

This chapter was a late inclusion, but turned out to be one of my favourites. While it doesn’t cover all the useful Maven plugins (many such as the Enforcer and Assembly plugins are picked up elsewhere in the book), it highlights some that aren’t always well known or used:

• The Remote Resources plugin – and particularly the right pattern for including a package of reusable resources
• The Build Number plugin
• The Shade plugin – a very useful way to handle redistributing JARs and “uberJARs” and reducing dependency and classloading issues
• The Build Helper plugin – useful bits and pieces like additional artifacts to deploy and reserved network ports for tests
• The AntRun plugin (and other scripting languages) – how to still use Ant without the guilt of violating The Maven Way!
• The Exec plugin – fork an external process in your build, or configure it for running your standalone application easily from the POM

I do think if there was one plugin I would have liked to cover more in this centralised location it would have been the Enforcer – perhaps pulling some entries together would make a good blog topic in the future though.

I hope you enjoy the sample chapter and consider buying the book!