Maven support in WebLogic & JDeveloper 12.1.2

In the 12.1.2 release of JDeveloper and WebLogic, Oracle really improved the support for Maven as build and provisioning tool. Oracle did this on multiple levels:

• an Utility to synchronize all the Oracle Middleware jars to a local ( .m2/repository) or a shared repository like nexus or artifactory
• ojmake maven plugin for just building JDeveloper projects.
• Updated its Weblogic plugin for deploying artifacts or even creating new WebLogic domains, installing the WebLogic software or running WLST scripts.
• Coherence plugin for packaging.
• JDeveloper keeps its application & projects options in sync with the Maven application & projects poms. ( You don't need to lookup all the dependencies jars). 

To get started we need to do the following.

first step is to configure the local Maven settings.

I start with making a maven.sh script or put these variables in the .profile of your build user or set all the windows environments variables which should contain the java_home and set the maven home to the Oracle Middleware Maven home.

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_21.jdk/Contents/Home/jre

export M2_HOME=/Users/edwin/Oracle/JDevMiddleware12.1.2/oracle_common/modules/org.apache.maven_3.0.4

export PATH=${M2_HOME}/bin:${JAVA_HOME}:$PATH

mvn -v 

We start by synchronizing the local or shared repository.

For this we  need to install a plugin and need to configure the Maven settings.xml which is default located in the .m2 folder of your user home. You can update or create a new settings.xml

When you only use a local repository which located in the .m2 folder we need to do the following steps

1) Install the oracle maven sync plugin to your local repository

cd $ORACLE_HOME/oracle_common/plugins/maven/com/oracle/maven/oracle-maven-sync/12.1.2

mvn deploy:deploy-file -DpomFile=oracle-maven-sync.12.1.2.pom -Dfile=oracle-maven-sync.12.1.2.jar

2) Configure the settings.xml, you need to add the following xml snippet to the settings.xml. This will set all the required maven sync plugin parameters.

 </profiles>

   <profile>

      <id>oracle-maven</id>

      <properties>

        <oracle-maven-sync.oracleHome>/Users/edwin/Oracle/JDevMiddleware12.1.2</oracle-maven-sync.oracleHome>

        <oracle-maven-sync.testOnly>false</oracle-maven-sync.testOnly>

        <oracle-maven-sync.failOnError>false</oracle-maven-sync.failOnError>

      </properties>      

    </profile>  

  </profiles>

  <activeProfiles>

     <activeProfile>oracle-maven</activeProfile>

  </activeProfiles>

3) Test the plugin 

mvn com.oracle.maven:oracle-maven-sync:help

You should see something like this 

When you use a shared Maven repository like nexus or artifactory you need to set this in the settings.xml

1) A Maven mirror with the address of your shared Maven repository and provide all the repositories with its passwords

  <servers>

    <server>

      <id>central</id>

      <username>admin</username>

      <password>password</password>

    </server>

    <server>

      <id>snapshots</id>

      <username>admin</username>

      <password>password</password>

    </server>

    <server>

      <id>artifactory</id>

      <username>admin</username>

      <password>password</password>

    </server>

    <server>

      <id>internal</id>

      <username>admin</username>

      <password>password</password>

    </server>

  </servers>

  <mirrors>

    <mirror>

      <id>artifactory</id>

      <name>Internal artifactory Mirror of Central</name>

      <url>http://hudson:8081/artifactory/repo</url>

      <mirrorOf>*</mirrorOf>

    </mirror>

    

  </mirrors>

  

  <profiles>

    <profile>

      <id>artifactory</id>

      <repositories>

        <repository>

          <snapshots>

            <enabled>false</enabled>

          </snapshots>

          <id>central</id>

          <name>libs-release</name>

          <url>http://hudson:8081/artifactory/libs-release</url>

        </repository>

        <repository>

          <snapshots />

          <id>snapshots</id>

          <name>libs-snapshot</name>

          <url>http://hudson:8081/artifactory/libs-snapshot</url>

        </repository>

        <repository>

          <snapshots />

          <id>internal</id>

          <name>libs-snapshot</name>

          <url>http://hudson:8081/artifactory/ext-release-local</url>

        </repository>

      </repositories>

      <pluginRepositories>

        <pluginRepository>

          <snapshots>

            <enabled>false</enabled>

          </snapshots>

          <id>central</id>

          <name>plugins-release</name>

          <url>http://hudson:8081/artifactory/plugins-release</url>

        </pluginRepository>

        <pluginRepository>

          <snapshots />

          <id>snapshots</id>

          <name>plugins-snapshot</name>

          <url>http://hudson:8081/artifactory/plugins-snapshot</url>

        </pluginRepository>

      </pluginRepositories>

    </profile>

    <profile>

      <id>oracle-maven</id>

      <properties>

        <oracle-maven-sync.serverId>internal</oracle-maven-sync.serverId>

        <oracle-maven-sync.oracleHome>/Users/edwin/Oracle/JDevMiddleware12.1.2</oracle-maven-sync.oracleHome>

        <oracle-maven-sync.testOnly>false</oracle-maven-sync.testOnly>

        <oracle-maven-sync.failOnError>false</oracle-maven-sync.failOnError>

      </properties>      

    </profile>  

    

  </profiles>

    

  <activeProfiles>

     <activeProfile>artifactory</activeProfile>

     <activeProfile>oracle-maven</activeProfile>

  </activeProfiles>

 

2) Now we can install the sync plugin 

cd $ORACLE_HOME/oracle_common/plugins/maven/com/oracle/maven/oracle-maven-sync/12.1.2

mvn deploy:deploy-file -DpomFile=oracle-maven-sync.12.1.2.pom -Dfile=oracle-maven-sync.12.1.2.jar -Durl=http://hudson:8081/artifactory/ext-release-local -DrepositoryId=artifactory

3) Test the plugin 

mvn com.oracle.maven:oracle-maven-sync:help

The next step is to synchronize the Oracle Middleware home with the local or shared Maven repository

mvn com.oracle.maven:oracle-maven-sync:push

Update the maven catalog

mvn archetype:crawl -Dcatalog=$HOME/.m2/archetype-catalog.xml

With as result. 

for more complete information how to do this, see this complete Oracle chapter 

We are ready to create some JDeveloper projects with Maven as build tool

JDeveloper keeps the libraries in sync with the project libraries and the pom dependencies.

Also you can add a separate JUnit Test project to this pom, it will do all your unit tests and keeps the code outside your project.

Default this test project should contain JUnit 3 code ( no annotations ) else no test will be executed ( be aware of the Java Class Naming conventions ) .

For JUnit 4 tests you should add the JUnit 4 dependency to the pom.

 

We can also use the maven plugin to do WebLogic actions like appc, create-domain, deploy, distribute-app, install, list-apps, redeploy, start-app, start-server, stop-app, stop-server, undeploy, uninstall, update-app, wlst, ws-clientgen,ws-wsdlc, ws-jwsc

for more information see this Oracle documentation