Using dependency management in a child pom - java

Is there any reason to use the dependency management section in a child pom? I'm looking at a maven project in my organization that uses inheritance and aggregation, where the parent and child poms both have a dependency management section. Is the child one doing anything?
I found this question really helpful but didn't find the answer to my specific question - Differences between dependencyManagement and dependencies in Maven

It can be used to control the version of transitive dependencies (libraries that your direct dependencies depend on) without adding a direct dependency.

Child POM will add or override dependency management entries of the parent POM.
Keep in mind that you really, really don't want to have different versions of the same dependency in your codebase. So use this feature judiciously. Preferably you should have organization-wide parent POM file with all dependency versions defined and child POMs don't change them.

In a child pom it does not make sense.
In a multi module setup you should control everything for all children in the parent. For example solve version conflicts / excluding transitive dependencies or import BOM files from other frameworks/libraries (for example spring boot/junit 5/etc.) makes handling of those libs including the centralised maintenance location...

Related

Exclude dependency in child pom inherited from parent pom

In my parent pom xml file I have declared some dependencies that are used in most of the children's poms.
However, in one child pom, I don't use these dependencies and I want to find a way in order to exclude them (in order not to be seen as unused dependencies).
Right now, in de dependencies section of child pom I have nothing! Any ideas?
AFAIK there is no way to exclude them.
You can, though, define exceptions in the maven dependency plugin so that they do not appear as "unused". For that, see
http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-dependency-plugin/analyze-mojo.html

How to define common configurations in maven projects

I hope this is the right place and right discussion to start.
What I want
I am looking for a good/the right way to handle multiple maven projects, that share a common configuration, which is in my case
Set the maven-compiler-plugin version with source/target compilation version
Set the maven-source-plugin to attach sources to artifacts
Define local repository server
Define common dependencies (via dependencyManagement and dependencies).
What I did
My first approach was to create a multi module project. But as the modules are actually independant, when it comes to release (so not the same release cycle), it seemed to be more a burden as a gain. I also failed to make it that I can independently work with a submodule in IntelliJ and have for each submodule it's own Jenkins job. For me it was always all or nothgin
The second approach was/is to have seperate projects. This makes coding in IntelliJ simple and Jenkins can have jobs for each project.
But now changes to parent pom, which affects the children, are tedious to delegate as all other projects must adopt to the change to the new parent.
It is doable and might be the way to work with this, but as I am afraid I misuse the parent concept here, I was wondering, whether there is a better way to use common settings in multiple maven projects ?
Thanks for reading and I hope this was understandable
You can re-use dependencies management section from different pom using <scope>import</scope>, described here, but that would work only for dependencies and you cannot do that for properties, repos and etc.
I'm afraid there is no better way to solve you problem then the parent-pom. Actually this is widely adopted approach. Spring boot, for example, uses that for a long time already.
One thing you want to do to is a good release management for that parent pom. Be sure that you are not dependent on SNAPSHOT version to not brake existing projects.
Just create a parent POM with the common settings and keep the rest separate.
Publish that POM to the (local) repository separately as a standalone entity with pom packaging (no submodules at this level).
Have a look at the Spring Boot parent POM as an example.
The only change in your projects would then be to use your new POM as the parent POM.
<project ... >
<parent>
<groupId>my-group</groupId>
<artifactId>my-parent</artifactId>
<version>1</version>
</parent>
...
Note however that it is generally not a good idea to hardcode dependencies in the parent POM (defining versions via dependencyManagement is OK, but let each project specify explicitly which dependency it actually needs).

Integration testing of Maven Plugin submodule

I have Maven project with multiple submodules. One of these submodules, let's say submodule X depends on all other submodules, as it is Maven Plugin that integrates everything else.
Now I want to use this Maven Plugin during verify stage in my parent POM to do real run of it over entire project (kind of eating own dogfood).
Unfortunatelly I'm getting error:
The projects in the reactor contain a cyclic reference
So how can I make such dogfood integration test for a Maven Plugin submodule?
I would review aggregation and inheritance: they are indeed two different concepts in Maven often used in combination but which can however be used in a complete separated manner as well.
In this case, your plugin submodule is certainly defined as a module in the aggregator pom (that is, it is a submodule). But I also presume the plugin submodule also has as parent pom the aggregator pom as well (that is, the aggregator pom is also the parent pom, which is a normal approach, but not always required).
Is the latter required? You could keep on having the multi-module/aggregator approach without necessarely having the aggregator as parent of the plugin submodule. As such, the plugin subModule would still be a module of the aggregator pom but it would not have as a parent the aggregator pom, decoupling it from it and as such breaking the cyclic dependencies.
Possible drawback: in the aggregator pom you were also defining common things (dependencies management, properties) required also in the plugin submodule. If the case, you would then need to duplicate/review these common settings only for the concerned submodule.
Small suggestion from my side. Cyclic means you have some transitive dependency in your modules. Can please check the dependency tree of your modules and resolve the circular dependency first.

How to update version number in Maven POMs

We have a very modular Maven pom set up, with common jars and specific jars all being bundled in to a war and ear. As there is so much reuse amongst the 70+ modules we do not use multi-module and each module can and does have its own lifecycle and can be released independently of any other module.
All modules inherit from various parent poms and ultimately every pom inherits from a master POM where all the external versions such as spring and the common local module versions are defined.
This works ok until we come to do a release. If the master POM requires a change, which it does occasionally, ALL poms need to be updated one way or another. I am aware that the maven versions plugin can update a specific POM with the latest SNAPSHOT versions etc, but this only works at the individual POM level.
We would like to be able to alter all poms once a release has been completed, iteratively.
We do not use multi-module POMs and are not able to change our build process to use this mechanism.
I have read around SO and the nearest to the problem is here.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/3615417/1279002
Writing a shell script seems to be one solution, but we have a Windows and Linux mix of development and build systems. I am sure other will have solved this issue. Can anybody advise how they have solved this?
In a similar setup, I have all my parent POMs always stay at 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT and setup various properties in the parent POMs to track internal module version numbers (so this setup now centralizes both dependency management versions AND custom module versions [via properties] into the parent POMs).
So if I need to update the reference to some com.myco:module-x, I can do this:
Edit the appropriate parent POM and set the <module-x.version>1.2.3</module-x.version> property to the new value
Rebuild/install the parent POM
Rebuild the target end-application (ear, war, jar app etc).
Where in module-x's POM it's definition may be something like this:
<groupId>com.myco</groupId>
<artifactId>module-x</artifactId>
<version>${module-x.version}</version>
And any POMs which reference com.myco:module-x refernece it via ${module-x.version} as well.
At this point, the build of the application will pickup the changes in the parent POM and thus any references it has to any properties defined in the parent POM.
There's some subtle nuances in doing this in terms of when/how the "middle man" modules need to get rebuilt...
But I really don't believe there is any silver bullet here.
The approach we've taken works pretty well, coupled with Jenkins to automate rebuilds of modules with interdependencies whenever parent POMs change.
The benefit here is that you seldom need to modify anything but the parent POMs, ever. The middle-man modules and application POMs don't need to be updated to get new version numbers, etc.
The biggest caveat though is that two rebuilds of a given module at the same version could result in a different artifact, for example:
module-x has a dependency on module-y:1.2.3
module-x is built (jar is created with a MANIFEST referencing module-y:1.2.3)
parent POM is modified to set <module-y.version>1.2.4</module-y.version>
module-y is rebuilt to create the 1.2.4 artifact
module-x is built (jar is created with a MANIFEST referencing module-y:1.2.4)
But note that #2 and #5 both built module-x with the same version for module-x, but with two different embedded MANIFEST's referencing different module-y versions.
We overcome this nuance by automating all the dependent modules with our Jenkins CI server

How do I properly setup a multi-module Maven project with sliding release cycles

I'm trying to work out the best way to setup our multi-module Apache Maven project in a way that allows for disparate release cycles of modules, and doesn't introduce dependency issues when debugging the project.
We currently have a setup along the lines of:
bigsystem#1.2
parent-1.1-SNAPSHOT
module a#1.4-SNAPSHOT
parented by parent#1.1-SNAPSHOT
module b#1.3-SNAPSHOT
parented by parent#1.1-SNAPSHOT
depends on a#1.1
module c#1.1-SNAPSHOT
parented by parent#1.1-SNAPSHOT
depends on a#1.2
depends on b#1.1
The dependencies declared in modules b and c contain the minimum version required to compile the module, which isn't necessarily the current version of the module, or the version of the module being deployed.
From a build perspective this works well, each module can be released/updated as needed, however when trying to debug the deployed application under IntelliJ IDEA (versions 8 and 9 EAPs) having opened the top level pom, IDEA decides that since we declared a dependency on a#1.2, that anytime we step into one of a's classes, it should open it from a-1.2-sources.jar rather than the current a#1.4 sources in the project. This is further confused by the fact that stepping into any of b's classes takes us to b#1.1 rather than b#1.3.
My initial attempt to work around this was to declare the version numbers in the parent pom's dependencyManagement section and just have the sub-modules inherit the version. This worked to the degree of solving the IDEA debug issue as the dependencyManagement section can point everyone to the current -SNAPSHOT versions.
This unfortunately causes a problem when doing a maven release due to having to release the parent pom before releasing the module, but as the parent may refer to multiple in-development -SNAPSHOTS it can't be released and we end up adding version references back to the modules pom to satisfy the release.
It would seem that using maven's dependencyManagement section would only really work well if we were releasing ALL bundles at the same time, regardless of if they changed, but as we're wanting to manage releases of each sub module only when needed this model doesn't seem to fit.
I have a suspicion I'm missing something, and that a combination of dependencyManagement and version ranges might satisfy out requirements although I've yet to see version ranges work properly.
Is there a better way? A proper way?
I would recommend not making them modules, but make their POMs independent. That way you do not have to worry about trying to satisfy parent POM dependencies. Since they are released independently, they really should have independent project object models. Think of Apache Commons as a template.
I think the problem with IDEA arises because you are using the root POM in your source structure to do two things that are usually mutually exclusive in Maven. You are first using the POM as a location to store common configuration information for unrelated (from a build perspective) Maven projects. Secondly you are using the POM as an aggregator for your build. You can do each of these without doing the other.
Like Rob said, remove your module a, b, etc. projects from the modules section of your parent POM. Secondly, move your parent POM down into its own directory as it is really a sibling of the other modules with respect to your build and release process. The way you have it now, it is more of a parent/aggregator.
The way you have it now also doesn't lend itself to tagging and releasing each module individually as a tag of your parent POM would likely needlessly include all of the module sub-folders.
Your file structure would look like:
parent
pom.xml
module a
pom.xml
module X
pom.xml
As for the thing you are missing, dependencyManagement isn't really well suited to manage versions for intra-project dependencies. That is dependencies between modules within an aggregated build. It is more well suited for declaring global versions for external dependencies.
The final/working solution we ended up using was fairly similar to what we started with. The actual project structure remains the same:
bigsystem#1.2
parent-1.1-SNAPSHOT
module a#1.4-SNAPSHOT
o parented by parent#1.1-SNAPSHOT
module b#1.3-SNAPSHOT
o parented by parent#1.1-SNAPSHOT
o depends on a#1.1
module c#1.1-SNAPSHOT
o parented by parent#1.1-SNAPSHOT
o depends on a#1.2
o depends on b#1.1
distribution a#1.2-SNAPSHOP
However the main differences are that:
parent module does not include any versions of project artifacts
individual modules fully declare their project dependencies and specify a version range, i.e. [1.0.0,1.1.0)
all modules start there version number cycles from .1, i.e 1.0.1-SNAPSHOT, this allows the version range to satisfied by initial snapshots (1.0.0-SNAPSHOT is earlier than 1.0.0 final, so not included).
distribution pom (not initially shown in question) identifies the exact version to be deployed/included in a specific release.
delete all project -SNAPSHOTS from local maven repository when releasing so that ranges pickup releases only ( or use -Dmaven.repo.local=/tmp/sometemprepo for a fresh local repo)
This makes each module more standalone and gives us the freedom to release and deploy new versions of our project artifacts with minimal fuss.
They certainly seem like separate modules. What benefits are you gaining by smashing them together if they have different dependencies, even within the multi-module project?

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