Creating Maven projects for the core packages and command line tools

This posting continues the series on moving from an Ant to a Maven build.

With your common packages now having their own Maven build you can move on to the system itself. For this series I am assuming that your system is composed of a web application with several command line tools. The web application is likely a large set of servlets or Spring controllers. It's a monolith and it is going to stay that way for the near future. The command lines tools are used for nightly batch operations or ad hoc reports, etc. What they have in common is that they require some of the system's packages to function. Eg, they depend on its data access packages, protocol facilitation packages, billing logic packages, etc. The next stage is to separate the system's core code, the command line tools, and the application code and its configuration.

System Core Project

Create a new Maven project for the system core code

mvn archetype:generate \
  -DgroupId=com.andrewgilmartin \
  -DartifactId=system-core \
  -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart \
  -DarchetypeVersion=1.4 \
  -DinteractiveMode=false

Replace the groupId and artifactId as appropriate.

Copy all the system core code to this project much like you did when extracting the common code. You will likely again find that the core code has entanglements with non-core code that you are going to have to work out. That can be very difficult and require some refactoring; hopefully not significant enough to abandon the whole effort.

As you are assembling the system-core project you may discover that it tries to come to life. You have the Java equivalent of archaea and bacteria, ie a self configuring class or sets of classes. These are classes with static blocks, eg

public class Archaea {
    static { /* do some configuration */ }
}

That static block is executed as the class is used. Normally this has not been an issue as the classes were always used in the context of the whole system. Now they are isolated. If they depended on external resources or files that are no longer available then their initialization failures leave them in undefined states. You will need to work this out. Can the static block be eliminated or replaced with initialization upon first instance use? Maybe a Design Patterns refactoring is needed.

Build and test as normal until you have clean results.

Once your system-core project is complete remove its code from the system's source tree, remove unneeded dependencies from the Ant build.xml, and add the new dependency to the <mvn-dependencies/> element in build.xml. Build and test the system as normal until you have clean results.

Command Line Tool Projects

Now extract the command line tools from the system into their own Maven projects. These projects will depend on the system-common and system-core projects. The Maven build will also need to create an "uberjar", that is a single jar that bundles all the classes and jars needed to run the tool.

Pick a command line tool and create a new Maven project for it as you would normally. Eg, for the gizmo command line tool use

mvn archetype:generate \
  -DgroupId=com.andrewgilmartin \
  -DartifactId=gizmo \
  -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart \
  -DarchetypeVersion=1.4 \
  -DinteractiveMode=false

Replace the groupId and artifactId as appropriate. Add to the pom.xml the system-common and system-core dependencies, and any other dependencies specific to the tool. Copy the tool's code from the system source tree to this project. Build and test as normal until you have clean results.

To create the "uberjar" update pom.xml and replace the whole <plugins/> with

<plugins>
    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.1.0</version>
        <configuration>
            <descriptorRefs>
                <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
            </descriptorRefs>
            <archive>
                <manifest>
                    <addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
                    <mainClass>com.andrewgilmartin.gizmo.App</mainClass>
                </manifest>
            </archive>
        </configuration>
        <executions>
            <execution>
                <id>assemble-all</id>
                <phase>package</phase>
                <goals>
                    <goal>single</goal>
                </goals>
            </execution>
        </executions>
    </plugin>
</plugins>

Replace "com.andrewgilmartin.gizmo.App" with the fully qualified class name of the tool. When you now build the Maven project you will see "maven-assembly-plugin" log

--- maven-assembly-plugin:3.1.0:single (assemble-all) @ gizmo ---
Building jar: /home/ajg/src/gizmo/target/gizmo-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar

The file "gizmo-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar" is the uberjar. To trial run your command line tool use

java -jar target/gizmo-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar

Don't forget to add whatever command line options prevent the tool from doing any actual work!

Once your tool is complete remove its code from the system's source tree and remove unneeded dependencies from the Ant build.xml.

Continue this procedure for each of your command line tools.

Where are we

At this point you have

  1. System common code Maven project
  2. System core code Maven project
  3. Command line tools Maven projects
  4. Remaining system Ant project

The remaining system is just the web application with its configuration, servlets or controllers, and the odd ball classes that don't fit in system-common or system-core. The next stage is to refactor the system Ant project itself.