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How to make a plugin-like architecture runnable?

Time:11-26

We have a couple of legacy Java projects, which we converted to Maven projects / modules. Previously, all projects were NetBeans projects and had no real dependency management. External dependencies existed on the companies network drive and were directly included as JARs in the NetBeans projects of each module. For the internal dependencies, simple project references were used. It was a pain to build everything because the programmer had to build everything in the right order.

Now, we are in the position that we can open all the Maven modules in IntelliJ IDEA and NetBeans. However, I am having trouble figuring out the best way to combine the different modules and external dependencies in a specific way, which conforms to in-house plugin-like structure. Especially with NetBeans (developing with both IDEs must be possible).

Here is how the git repositories / project structure roughly looks like. The folder structure of the modules is the default Maven structure for each module. The list feature of this site was too clumsy, so I included it as screenshot...

Structure Git Repos

We have an internal maven repository for the stuff and building with maven etc. is working. For Intellij IDEA i can run and debug the end product for customer1 via a custom run configuration, which copies the needed files in the needed structure:

enter image description here

With IntelliJ IDEA, I can debug the software, but I think that the approach (custom IntelliJ run config I created, pointing to all needed JARs and files directly) is rather ugly, and for NetBeans I could not find a similar "run configuration" mechanism.

So I tried to achieve this build process by creating a new "Customer1Runnable" Maven project as a sort of build description, which points to all needed Maven modules. Based on this, I believed I could achieve and automatism to create the needed software structure. Ergo copy all modules into a plugin folder and all dependencies of the modules into a lib folder inside the Customer1Runnable project, using the maven-assembly-plugin.

First off, is my assumption correct that this is a possible use case for the maven-assembly-plugin?

The project itself does not have any source files, it is only a pom.xml and the assembly-config.xml descriptor. I attached the assembly-plugin to the package phase. When running the mvn package command all connected modules are built, but for the execution of the assembly-plugin I get the following output:

Windows CMD output of Customer1Runnable maven project

For starters, I only tried to include one module in the assembly descriptor. This is the XML (opicom-assembly.xml) for it:

<assembly xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/ASSEMBLY/2.1.0"
            xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
            xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/ASSEMBLY/2.1.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/assembly-2.1.0.xsd">
    <id>opicom-assembly</id>
    <formats>
        <format>dir</format>
    </formats>
    <includeBaseDirectory>false</includeBaseDirectory>
    <moduleSets>
        <moduleSet>
            <useAllReactorProjects>true</useAllReactorProjects>
                <includes>
                    <include>my.company.reporting:module1</include>
                </includes>
        </moduleSet>
    </moduleSets>
</assembly>

pom.xml of Customer1Runnable project

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <version>1.6</version>
    <groupId>my.company.customer1</groupId>
    <artifactId>OpicomRunnable</artifactId>
    <packaging>pom</packaging>
    <name>OpicomRunnable</name>
    
    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>Company-Maven-Repo</id>
            <url>file:\\\\MyCompany\TFSDrop\MavenRepo</url>
        </repository>
    </repositories>
    
    <modules>
        <module>../my.company.customer1.module1</module>
        <module>../my.company.customer1.module2</module>
        .
        .
        .
        <module>../../MyCompany_Common/Report/my.company.reporting.module1</module>
    </modules>  
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.3.0</version>
                <inherited>true</inherited>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>copy-dependencies</id>
                        <phase>package</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>single</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
                <configuration>
                    <descriptors>
                        <descriptor>opicom-assembly.xml</descriptor>
                    </descriptors>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

The pom of a module looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <parent>
        <groupId>my.company</groupId>
        <artifactId>reporting</artifactId>
        <version>1.3</version>
        <relativePath>../pom.xml</relativePath>
    </parent>

    <artifactId>module1</artifactId>
    <version>1.3</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>



    <dependencies>
        <!-- external dependencies -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>commons-pool</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-pool</artifactId>
            <version>1.6</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.oracle.database.jdbc</groupId>
            <artifactId>ojdbc8</artifactId>
            <version>21.1.0.0</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.3.0</version>
                <configuration>
                    <finalName>my-company-${project.artifactId}</finalName>
                    <appendAssemblyId>false</appendAssemblyId>
                    <outputDirectory>../build</outputDirectory>
                    <descriptorRefs>
                        <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
                    </descriptorRefs>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

Thanks for any input on what I am doing wrong here / how to achieve this with Maven.

EDIT: As requested, here an example project as ZIP-File. Assembly folder after building

It is also worth noting that the configurations of the "Build project", "Run project" and "Debug project" inside NetBeans need a tiny bit of modification. (Right Click Module "distribution" -> "Properties" -> point "Actions"

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