Maven Assembly Validation

A logging implementation story

Logging Implementations

• Abstraction
• Implementations
• Configuration

Abstraction

• We use SLF4J
• Different assemblies use different backing implementation
• Assemblies currently manage implementations
• Chef cookbooks manage implementation configuration

Implementation

• Concept servers use log4j implementation
• Write Back servers use JDK implementation
• Assemblies are responsible for managing the implementation JAR which can conflict with the configuration expectation

bridges: Directing abstractions to implementation

• jcl-over-slf4j
• jul-to-slf4j
• log4j-over-slf4j

Enforcing assemblies

enforce patterns in assemblies

• Write a Maven plugin
• Utilize maven-enforcer-plugin rules and write custom rules where needed

Write a Maven Plugin to do enforcement

• Ecosystem is not great
• Writing code for something that a plugin already supports
• It isn't a simple amount of code

From: http://maven.apache.org/plugin-developers/plugin-testing.html

Use maven-enforcer-plugin

• Has a large standard set of rules to support enforcement
• Is pluggable to write your own custom enforcement rules
• Configuration in POM can get intense

Maven-enforcer-plugin custom rules

• Custom rules are hosted in another JAR that the plugin references
• Requires additional configuration in the plugin to leverage

      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-enforcer-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.4</version>
        <dependencies>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>custom-rule</groupId>
            <artifactId>custom-rule-sample</artifactId>
            <version>1.0</version>
          </dependency>
        </dependencies>
        ...
      </plugin>   

maven-enforcer-plugin

standard rules

Composition

Rather than sharing through inheritance (parent POM), share through composition of a POM.

 

A POM can be built by referencing an artifact which composes settings of that POM.

 

Artifacts are shared vs. forcing inheritence / copy-paste patterns

inheritence

Parent POM which is defined that projects must reference to inherit its settings.

 

Painful and challenging to re-use code across POMs by requiring inheritance to achieve it.

 

Copy/paste is typically applied across parent POMs of reactor projects.

Maven tiles

• Compose POMs by injecting in configuration defined by a tile
• Share common configuration sections through tiles
• Consumers can reference a tile, and can specify version range to automatically take newer passive version changes: [1, 2)

Enforcer Tile

Compiler Tile

POM

https://github.com/repaint-io/maven-tiles

Maven tiles

• Tile project contains:
  • pom.xml (assembly / release info for the tile)
  • tile.xml: Hosts the snippet of the POM you want to integrate (ex. maven-enforcer-plugin settings)
• Side note: It appears that you don't want to reference SNAPSHOT versions of tiles in reactors, as modules can inherit the version it declares
  • Reference tiles which are released (can test internally with a non-SNAPSHOT version)

Example

Referencing a Tile (parent POM of reactor)

            <plugin>
                <groupId>io.repaint.maven</groupId>
                <artifactId>tiles-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>${maventiles.plugin.version}</version>
                <extensions>true</extensions>
                <configuration>
                    <filtering>true</filtering>
                    <tiles>
                        <tile>com.cerner.sync.ml:sync-ml-enforcer-plugin-tile:xml:1.0</tile>
                    </tiles>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>