Netbeans+platform+maven

Efficient developmentof large NetBeans Platform

applications with Maven

Fabrizio Giudici, Senior Java ArchitectTidalwave s.a.s - [email protected]

Friday, September 24, 2010

Efficient development of large NetBeans Platform applications with Maven

Agenda

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Agenda

• Introducing the NetBeans Platform

2



Agenda


• The NetBeans Platform Ant Build Harness

2



Agenda



• Limitations of the NetBeans Platform Ant Build Harness

2



Agenda




• Introducing Maven

2



Agenda





• The NetBeans Platform Maven Plugin

2



Agenda






• Optimizing NetBeans Platform Maven projects

2



Agenda







• Reuse of third parties’ libraries (NBPWR project, optional)

2



Agenda







• Reuse of third parties’ libraries (NBPWR project, optional)

• Conclusions

2



About the speaker

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About the speaker

• Senior Software Architect, Mentor, Technical Writer

• Fourteen years of Java Experience (JSE, JEE, JME, etc...)

• Sun Consultant since 1998, Oracle consultant since 2010

• Author of a number of open source projects

• Speaker at JavaOne, Devoxx, Jazoon, JAX Italia and other events

• Member of the NetBeans Dream Team

• Co-leader of JUG Milano

• Java.Net blogger at http://www.java.net/blogs/fabriziogiudici

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Ant vs Maven?

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Ant vs Maven?

• What this presentation is not:

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Ant vs Maven?


• A “X is better than Y” sermon

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Ant vs Maven?



• What this presentation is:

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Ant vs Maven?




• An analysis of scenarios where Maven may serve better than Ant

• An analysis of Maven-based NetBeans Platform projects

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Ant vs Maven?






• Some basics about the NetBeans Platform and Maven assumed

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Ant vs Maven?






• Some basics about the NetBeans Platform and Maven assumed

• Based on the speaker’s experience of four years with Ant & the Platform, then replaced by Maven

4



Related talks at JavaOne 2010

• S314388: Maven 3.x: The Evolution of Enterprise Java Build Infrastructures

• S314711: Building Software with Rich Client Platforms

• S313667: Swing OSGi Modular Desktop Application Framework

• S314266: The Cutting Edge of Desktop Software: The NetBeans Platform in Practice

• S314141: Patterns for Modularity

• S313338 Getting More Out of Your Hudson

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The NetBeans Platform

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• The best framework for Swing desktop applications

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• Provides “plumbing” for many common tasks

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• Modular, plugin-oriented, scalable

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• Since 6.9 provides integration with the OSGi framework

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• Used also as the foundation of the Oracle NetBeans IDE

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• Very popular in all the industrial segments

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• Very popular in all the industrial segments

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... more success stories at http://netbeans.org/features/platform/showcase.html



The Platform Ant Build Harness

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• By default, the NetBeans Platform uses Ant

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• for building itself (together with the IDE)

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• for building Platform-based applications

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• NetBeans Platform Ant Build Harness

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• Set of standard Ant scripts, tasks and extensions

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• Can be used from the IDE or by the command line

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• A minimum preliminary setup is required

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• Very good starting point for beginners

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• Very good starting point for beginners

• Many people use it even for complex applications

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Using the Ant Build Harness

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• Two ways of using the harness

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• Supplied with the IDE and referred to by the project

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• Needs a local environment setup to “point” to the IDE installation folder

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• Embedded with the project

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• Possible clashes if the used Platform version is different than the NetBeans IDE version

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• Possible clashes if the used Platform version is different than the NetBeans IDE version

Key concept: the Ant build harness is a specific build system for the Platform projects

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When Ant might not scale

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• With a large number of modules

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• Good design practices lead to many small packages

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• With multiple projects with many inter-dependencies

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• With multiple projects with many inter-dependenciesIn other words: how to reuse modules?

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• Might be a single project that’s worth while splittingIn other words: how to reuse modules?

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• Might be a single project that’s worth while splitting

• What’s a module of the NetBeans Platform, BTW?

In other words: how to reuse modules?

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• A collection of cohese packages exposing an API


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• Packed in .nbm files (.jar + metadata)


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blueMarineMetadata

blueMarineSemantic

blueMarineMedia

blueMarinePDF

blueMarineCore

blueMarineCatalog

blueMarineGallery

blueMarineLightTable

blueMarine

blueMarineGeo

OpenBlueSky

forceTen

blueOcean blueBill ServerblueBill for Android

Only a subset of dependencies shown












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Pushing the Ant Build: Suite Chaining

Slide in a graph showing a dependency graph: Suite --> Platform

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• Platform: a self-contained set of .nbm modules


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• The NetBeans Platform is obviously one example of a platform


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• Module Suite: a set of .nbm modules depending on a Platform


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• Any NetBeans Platform-based project is a suite


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• It is possible to have a Suite depending on a Platform + another Suite (“Suite Chaining”) Slide in a graph showing a

dependency graph: Suite --> Platform

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• It is possible to have a Suite depending on a Platform + another Suite (“Suite Chaining”)

• Doable, but cumbersome


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• It is possible to have a Suite depending on a Platform + another Suite (“Suite Chaining”)

• Doable, but cumbersome

• Doesn’t scale well with multiple suite levels


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Reusing modules with the Ant build harness

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• It’s possible to create a custom platform, assembling arbitrary .nbm modules

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• Of course, dependencies must be satisfied

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• You can assemble a Platform feeding the .nbm artifacts from a project to another project

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• This approach (apparently) scales well beyond the first level

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• http://weblogs.java.net/blog/2007/11/03/netbeans-rcp-beyond-suite-chaining

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• NetBeans 6.7 introduced support for reusing modules

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• NetBeans 6.7 introduced support for reusing modules

• http://wiki.netbeans.org/DevFaqHowToReuseModules

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Limits of Custom Platforms with Ant

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• Conceptually simple, the cumbersome part is automating the “feed” of NBM artifacts from a project to another

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• Personal experience

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• Wrote a couple of custom Ant tasks to enhance the original harness with artifact management facilities

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• Reached some high complexity when trying to share javadocs and sources too

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• Sources in particular are important, e.g. for profiling etc...

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• At this point I moved to Maven...

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• At this point I moved to Maven...

• I’m recommending to customers - of course your mileage may vary

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Introducing Maven

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Introducing Maven

• A different building tool than Ant

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Introducing Maven


• Standard lifecycle (= sequence of phases) applied to projects

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Introducing Maven



• Projects are described by a POM (Project Object Model)

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Introducing Maven




• Composed of plugins attaching goals to phases

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Introducing Maven





• Provides efficient artifact management with repositories

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Introducing Maven






• more info later

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Introducing Maven






• more info later

Ant: interpreter to create build scripts

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Introducing Maven






• more info later


Maven: standard, well defined build system that can be customized

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Introducing Maven






• more info later



Programmatic13



Introducing Maven






• more info later



Programmatic Declarative13



Inheritance and composition

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• “Object model” means it implies some typical OO practices

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• Inheritance

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• Inheritance

• A module POM can inherit from a parent POM

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• Inheritance


• Composition

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• Inheritance


• Composition

• A module POM can import parts of other modules POM

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• Inheritance


• Composition


• Both practices reduces entropy (DRY)

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• Inheritance


• Composition



• Still verbose because of XML (but it’s syntax, not semantics)

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• Inheritance


• Composition



• Still verbose because of XML (but it’s syntax, not semantics)

• Maven 3 allows for more compact syntaxes (e.g. Groovy)

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Artifacts, dependencies, repositories

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• Each module

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• Each module

• Possibly depends on other modules artifacts

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• Each module


• Produces a single artifact (which might consist in multiple files)

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• Each module



• Each artifact

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• Each module



• Each artifact

• Has got unique coordinates: groupId, artifactId, version, packaging, classifier

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• Each module



• Each artifact


• Can be retrieved from a local / remote repository

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• Each module



• Each artifact


• Can be retrieved from a local / remote repository

• Can be published to a local / remote repository

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The NBM Maven Plugin

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• A specific Maven plugin for the NetBeans Platform

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• Defines the ‘nbm’ packaging

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• Creates nbm artifacts

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• Manages branding

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• Creates .zip and JNLP distributions

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• Properly runs the project being developed

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• Properly runs the project being developed

• Out-of-the-box support by the IDE, better integration with 6.9

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Further benefitsIf you have time, demonstrate e.g. FindBugs integration. In any case, connect to the Tidalwave Hudson instance and show some stuff

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Further benefits

• Your project becomes just a standard Maven project

If you have time, demonstrate e.g. FindBugs integration. In any case, connect to the Tidalwave Hudson instance and show some stuff

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Further benefits



No more NetBeans specific “build harness”

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Further benefits


• No special build instructions: mvn clean install



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Further benefits



• IDE - neutral (IDEA, Eclipse)



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Further benefits




• Immediately available for CI without any specific setup



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Further benefits





• Easy to augment with QA plugins (e.g. Cobertura, FindBugs)



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Further benefits






• Just configure the plugin in the Master POM



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Further benefits






• Just configure the plugin in the Master POM

• Run it (e.g. mvn findbugs:findbugs)



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Project structure

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Project structure

• Modules

• Master POM

• Application module

• What and how to assemble as final app

• Branding module

• e.g. i18n resources, customization of existing platform resources

• One or more .nbm modules

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Master POM

BrandingModule POM

ApplicationModule POM

Other NBM POM

*

1

1



Demo

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Demo

• Show forceTen Example 1

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Dependency caveat!

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Dependency caveat!

• Maven dependencies are transitive

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Dependency caveat!


• NetBeans Platform dependencies are not transitive

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Dependency caveat!



• The Maven plugin:

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Dependency caveat!




• automatically translates direct Maven dependencies on NBM modules to Platform dependencies

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Dependency caveat!





• performs a consistency check about missing transitive dependencies and dependencies on non-public classes

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Dependency caveat!






• OSGi bundles allowed as dependencies since IDE 6.9 + NBM plugin 3.2

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Dependency caveat!







• Old versions of the plugin behaved in a different way

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Dependency caveat!







• Old versions of the plugin behaved in a different way

• Not mentioning some deprecated practices still available in 3.x

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Reuse of NBM modules in non-platform projects

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• The NBM Maven plugin produces both a .nbm and a .jar artifacts (different packagings)

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• This means that a non-platform project can reuse a NBM module

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• E.g. Java SE, Android, etc...

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• Just declare a dependency as usual

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• Projects whose packaging is nbm automatically depend on nbm artifacts

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• Projects whose packaging is nbm automatically depend on nbm artifacts

• Projects whose packaging is jar automatically depend on jar artifacts

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Demo

• Show forceTen Example 2

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Module versioning strategies

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• Every module artifact shares the same version of the project

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• Simpler to manage

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• Used by NetBeans for publishing Maven artifacts (e.g. NETBEANS691)

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• Trick - indeed every NetBeans module has got its own version

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• Every module artifact has got its own version number

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• Slightly more complex to manage

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• Slightly more complex to manage

• Required if your modules might move from a project to another

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Smart dependency convergence

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• The <dependencyManagement> section

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• Declare all the versions of the dependencies used in a project just once, in a parent POM (DRY)

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• Children POMs won’t need to declare the version again

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<dependencyManagement> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>it.tidalwave.netbeans</groupId> <artifactId>it-tidalwave-netbeans-capabilitiesprovider</artifactId> <version>1.1.26</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>it.tidalwave.netbeans</groupId> <artifactId>it-tidalwave-netbeans-docking</artifactId> <version>1.1.14</version> </dependency> ... </dependencies> </dependencyManagement>







• The <dependencyManagement> section can be imported

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• Import a single POM specifying its single version

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• Maven will “unpack” from it all the declared versions at once

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• Maven will “unpack” from it all the declared versions at once

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<dependencyManagement> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>it.tidalwave.semantic</groupId> <artifactId>semantic</artifactId> <version>0.10.19</version> <type>pom</type> <scope>import</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>it.tidalwave.netbeans</groupId> <artifactId>openbluesky</artifactId> <version>0.8.4</version> <type>pom</type> <scope>import</scope> </dependency> ... </dependencies> </dependencyManagement>



Optimizing a Maven Platform project

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Master POM

BrandingModule POM


Other NBM POM

*

1

1




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Master POM

BrandingModule POM


Other NBM POM

*

1

1

Modules POM

BrandingModule POM


Other NBM POM

Master POM

1

1

1

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Contains dependencyManagement of modules imported by this

project

Master POM

BrandingModule POM


Other NBM POM

*

1

1

Modules POM

BrandingModule POM


Other NBM POM

Master POM

1

1

1

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project

Contains dependencyManagement of modules exported by this

project

Master POM

BrandingModule POM


Other NBM POM

*

1

1

Modules POM

BrandingModule POM


Other NBM POM

Master POM

1

1

1

*




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project

Contains dependencyManagement of modules exported by this

project

Other projectPOM

<<imports>>

A single POM import retrieves all the correct modules versions in a

consistent way

Master POM

BrandingModule POM


Other NBM POM

*

1

1

Modules POM

BrandingModule POM


Other NBM POM

Master POM

1

1

1

*



The NBPWR projectFrom there, it’s optional. If you ran out of time, just mention the project

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The NBPWR project

• The NetBeans Platform needs to “wrap” non-platform jar libraries

From there, it’s optional. If you ran out of time, just mention the project

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The NBPWR project


• Declare public API, dependencies, other platform properties, ...


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The NBPWR project



• Not hard, but it’s a waste to redo the same thing over and over for multiple projects


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The NBPWR project



• Not hard, but it’s a waste to redo the same thing over and over for multiple projects

• The “NetBeans Platform Wrapper Repository” project provides reusable wrappers for some common FLOSS libraries


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NBPWR issues

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NBPWR issues

• Needs an alternate coordinate schema

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NBPWR issues


• Can’t use the original artifact coordinates + changing the packaging

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NBPWR issues



• Also for having dependencies on a wrapped NBM, not the original JAR

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NBPWR issues




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org.swinglabs:swingx:1.6becomes

com.kenai.nbpwr:org-jdesktop-swingx:1.6-201002261215



NBPWR issues




• Needs a further versioning qualifier

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NBPWR issues





• Errors might be done e.g. in declaring the public API, thus needing a fix release targeting the same original library version

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NBPWR issues






• It’s possible to attach original sources and javadocs

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NBPWR issues






• It’s possible to attach original sources and javadocs

• Granularity: one .nbm per .jar or aggregates?

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NBPWR usage

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NBPWR usage

• You might not like some NBPWR decisions

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NBPWR usage


• Interested in feedback about this!

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NBPWR usage



• Still, a NBPWR-like approach is time-saving inside a given corporate / workgroup

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NBPWR usage



• Still, a NBPWR-like approach is time-saving inside a given corporate / workgroup

• Cooperating, it could become a standard way of doing things

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Conclusion

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Conclusion

• The NB Platform is a highly modular and scalable framework

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Conclusion


• The And Build Harness might not scale with your needs

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Conclusion



• Cross-dependencies in large projects might be a problem

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Conclusion




• Maven is a valuable and effective alternative

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Conclusion





• Intuitive artifact management and cross-dependency management

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Conclusion






• Your Platform project just becomes a standard Maven project

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Conclusion







• Can be used with other IDEs - easy QA & Continuous Integration

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Conclusion








• Beware: to be effective, Maven needs some pieces of infrastructure!

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Conclusion








• Beware: to be effective, Maven needs some pieces of infrastructure!

• Ant vs Maven is partly subjective

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Question time

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Question time

• Follow me

• at my Java.Net blog

• at DZone

• Useful links

• http://platform.netbeans.org

• http://wiki.netbeans.org/MavenBestPractices

• http://forceten.tidalwave.it/development/tutorials/using-the-geoexplorer-and-the-geoviewer/

• http://bluemarine.tidalwave.it

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Netbeans+platform+maven

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