Creating a Maven Project that Depends on org.lcsim

Overview

Maven can be used as the build system for your project. It automates most of the low-level details of dependencies and building for Java projects. For instance, it can automatically download external JARs required by your project. The org.lcsim project uses this tool for its build system, as well.

Directory Setup

Create a directory for your project and go into it.

mkdir ExampleProject
cd ExampleProject

Now, create a directory for your source files, including directories for the org.lcsim base package.

mkdir -p src/org/lcsim

A directory for test cases should also be created.

mkdir -p test/org/lcsim

Build Files

The project's root directory needs to contain three Maven configuration files.

• project.xml - main configuration file, listing the project's core information and its dependencies
• maven.xml - Maven settings, such as the default build target
• project.properties - project properties file, including source repository locations, e.g. freehep.org

These files can be obtained from org.lcsim's root directory.

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.freehep.org:/cvs/lcd lcsim
cd lcsim
cp project.xml maven.xml project.properties ..
cd ..
rm -rf lcsim

Customize the following information in project.xml for your project.

<artifactId>ExampleProject</artifactId>
<currentVersion>0.1</currentVersion>
<organization>
  <name>Example Organization</name>
  <url>http://www.example.org</url>
</organization>
<description>This is an example Maven project.</description>
<shortDescription>Example Maven project</shortDescription>
<url>http://www.example.org/ExampleProject</url>
<issueTrackingUrl>http://www.example.org/ExampleProject/bugs</issueTrackingUrl>
<repository>
  <connection>scm:cvs:pserver:anonymous@cvs.example.org:/cvs/example:ExampleProject</connection>
</repository>
<name>ExampleProject</name>
<inceptionYear>2005</inceptionYear>

After the project information, the following lines should be inserted into project.xml to make it depend on org.lcsim, itself.

<dependency>
  <groupId>lcsim</groupId>
  <artifactId>lcsim</artifactId>
  <version>0.9</version>
  <url>http://www.lcsim.org</url>
</dependency>

The org.lcsim JAR is not currently maintained as a downloadable dependency. Each project user needs to compile and build this program themselves in order to install it to the local repository.

Basic Build Command

The project can be built from the command line with this simple command.

maven

This creates the default JAR file and installs it into the ~/.maven/repository directory under lcsim.

Alternately, you can use the Netbeans IDE to build your Maven-based projects.

Run Plugin

The FreeHep Run Plugin can generate a run script for your project.

To enable this functionality, insert the following into the project.xml file.

<dependency>
  <groupId>freehep</groupId>
  <artifactId>freehep-run-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>1.1.1</version>
  <url>http://java.freehep.org/maven/freehep/plugins</url>
  <type>plugin</type>
</dependency>

Maven needs to know which class the run script should execute. This goes into the project.properties file.

maven.jar.mainclass=org.lcsim.example.ExampleMain

To build the script, execute the following target.

maven -Drun.install=$(pwd) run:install 

Two run scripts named after your project should now be found in the bin directory.

There is a Unix/Linux script

bin/ExampleProject

and also one for Windows.

bin/ExampleProject.bat

These scripts will setup the classpath and execute the main function of the specified class.

public static void main(String[] args)

On Linux, the script can be run from the current directory, as follows.

./bin/ExampleProject [args]

The command line syntax of the script is completely up to you.

JAS

When http://jas.freehep.org/jas3 starts, it can automatically load your project JAR.

This target will copy the project's JAR into JAS3's extensions directory, located at ~/.JAS3/extensions.

maven jas:install

The class should now be available using the File -> Load command within JAS3.

Build Script

A full build command for your project, incorporating all of the above features, would look something like this.

maven -Dmaven.test.skip=true -Drun.install=$(pwd) clean jar:install jas:install run:install

This will do a clean build, skipping tests, and installing the run script to the current directory. It also puts the JAR files into the ~/maven/repository area and ~/.JAS3/extensions directories.