Maven Guide

A reference for building GeoServer with Maven.

Installing Maven

See Tools.

Running Maven

Maven provides a wide range of commands used to do everything from compiling a module to generating test coverage reports. Most maven commands can be run from the root the source tree, or from a particular module.

Note

When attempting to run a maven command from the root of the source tree remember to change directory from the root the checkout into the src directory.

When running a command from the root of the source tree, or from a directory that contains other modules the command will be run for all modules. When running the command from a single module, it is run only for that module.

Building

The most commonly maven command used with GeoServer is the install command:

mvn clean install

While the clean command is not necessary, it is recommended. Running this command does the following:

  • compiles source code

  • runs unit tests

  • installs artifacts into the local maven repository

Skipping tests

Often it is useful to skip unit tests when performing a build. Adding the flag -DskipTests to the build command will only compile unit tests, but not run them:

mvn -DskipTests clean install

Building offline

Maven automatically downloads dependencies declared by modules being built. In the case of SNAPSHOT dependencies, Maven downloads updates each time it performs the first build of the day.

GeoServer depends on SNAPSHOT versions of the GeoTools library. The automatic download can result in lengthy build time while Maven downloads updated GeoTools modules. If GeoTools was built locally, these downloads are not necessary.

Also, if GeoTools is being modified locally, then the local versions rather than SNAPSHOT versions of modules should be used.

This can be remedied by running maven in “offline mode”:

mvn -o clean install

In offline mode Maven will not download external dependencies, and will not update SNAPSHOT dependencies.

Building extensions

By default, extensions are not included in the build. They are added to the build explicitly via profiles. For example the following command adds the restconfig extension to the build:

mvn clean install -P restconfig

Multiple extensions can be enabled simultaneously:

mvn clean install -P restconfig,oracle

A special profile named allExtensions enables all extensions:

mvn clean install -P allExtensions

Recover Build

  • After fixing a test failure; you can “resume” from a specific point in the build:

    mvn install -rf extension/wps
    
  • Recover from a 301 Redirect

    A long standing bug in Maven from 2.0.10 handling of 301 errors when an artifact has been moved. The work around is to run Maven with the option:

    mvn install -Dmaven.wagon.provider.http=httpclient
    

    This is not a common issue.

Profiles

Additional profiles are defined in the pom.xml files providing optional build steps. Profiles are directly enabled with the -P flag, others are automatically activated based on platform used or a -D property being defined.

To build the release module as part of your build:

-Drelease

To include remote tests:

-PremoteOwsTests

Profiles are also used manage optional extensions community plugins:

-Pproxy
-Poracle
-Pupload
-Pwps

Additional profiles are defined in the pom.xml files providing optional build steps. Profiles are directly enabled with the -P flag, others are automatically activated based on platform used or a -D property being defined.

To build javadocs with UML graph:

-Duml

To build the release module as part of your build:

-Drelease

To include the legacy modules:

-Plegacy

To include remote tests:

-PremoteOwsTests

Profiles are also used manage several of the optional community plugins:

-Pupload
-Pwps
-Pproxy

Generating test coverage reports

Test coverage reports can be generated by running tests with the jacoco profile enabled:

mvn test -Pjacoco

Coverage reports are generated in the target/site/jacoco directory of each module.

Running the web module with Jetty

The maven jetty plugin can be used to run modules which are web based in an embedded Jetty container:

cd geoserver_2.0.x/src/web/app
mvn jetty:run

Note

This command must be run from the web/app module, it will fail if run from elsewhere.

The above command will run GeoServer with the built in data directory. To specify a different data directory the GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR flag is used:

mvn -DGEOSERVER_DATA_DIR=/path/to/datadir jetty:run

Building the web module

When the web module is installed, it does so with a particular configuration built in. By default this is the minimal configuration. However this can be customized to build in any configuration via the configId and configDirectory flags. For example:

mvn clean install -DconfigId=release -DconfigDirectory=../../../data/release

The above command builds the web module against the release configuration that is shipped with GeoServer. The configId is the name of the configuration directory to include, and the configDirectory is the parent directory of the configuration directory to include.

This can also be used when running the local jetty application server:

mvn jetty:run -DconfigId=release -DconfigDirectory=../../../data/release

You may also use an absolute path, if you have a custom data directory you would like to use.