Maven Repos Support (MVNCR)¶

(#1696)

Maven repository can be integrated with Z2 as component repositories.

This is used for most of the Samples and Add-ons to access third-party binaries, so these are good examples. See Sample-hibernate-basic for a discussion on use of the MVNCR.

For Add-ons it is typical to rely on fragments (see below) to declare dependencies, and for a sample (or - of course - any actual solution) it is typical to declare a maven component repository to set the actual remote source of artifacts (and more).

Principles¶

The main idea is that based on some root artifacts and some maven remote repository configuration, jar artifacts and dependencies will be made available as Java component in Z2 that can be referenced or included as suits best.

Name mapping and version resolution¶

Artefacts in Maven repos have a fully qualified name of the form

<groupId>:<artifactId>:<version>

or

<groupId>:<artifactId>:<packaging>:<version>

By default, a jar artifact <groupId>:<artifactId>:<version> will result into a Java component of name

<groupId>:<artifactId>/java

Given that the resolution of the root artifacts and dependencies lead to artifacts of the same packaging, group id, and artifact id but with different versions the higher version number will be used (but see #1695).

Example configuration¶

A maven repository component may look like this:

com.zfabrik.systemStates.participation=com.zfabrik.boot.main/sysrepo_up
com.zfabrik.component.type=com.zfabrik.mvncr
mvncr.priority=200
mvncr.roots=\
    org.springframework:spring-context:4.0.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework:spring-aspects:4.0.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework:spring-tx:4.0.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework:spring-orm:4.0.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework:spring-web:4.0.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework.security:spring-security-core:3.2.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework.security:spring-security-web:3.2.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework.security:spring-security-config:3.2.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework.security:spring-security-aspects:3.2.2.RELEASE,\
    org.hibernate:hibernate-entitymanager:4.3.4.Final,\
    aopalliance:aopalliance:1.0,\
    org.aspectj:aspectjweaver:1.7.4,\
    org.aspectj:aspectjtools:1.6.9,\

mvncr.excluded=\
        org.jboss.spec.javax.transaction:jboss-transaction-api_1.2_spec

mvncr.managed=\
        commons-logging:commons-logging:1.1.2

By default, all non-optional compile scope dependencies will be resolved. The resulting Java component will have the target artifact as API library and all non-optional compile scope dependencies as public references in their mapped form.

The z2 core will use lazy component class loaders to make sure that use of include libraries has virtually no runtime penalty.

Component properties¶

name	meaning	default
mvncr.settings	Specifies the location of the settings XML file relative to the components resources	settings.xml
mvncr.roots	A comman-separated list of root artifacts. See below for more details	n.a.
mvncr.priority	The repository priority in repository chaining as defined in IComponentsRepository	500
mvncr.managed	Fixed artifact versions, if encountered during recursive root resolution. This corresponds to a <dependencyManagement> section in a Maven POM file	n.a.
mvncr.excluded	A comma separated list of artifacts that will be skipped during resolution of any root	n.a.

Fine-Tuning of the Dependency Graph¶

In order to deviate from the default resolution and mapping, maven repository roots may be specified with a query string like this:

    org.springframework.security:spring-security-aspects:3.2.2.RELEASE?versioned=true&scope=RUNTIME&excluded=commons-logging:commons-logging:1.1.2

Admissable query params are

param	meaning
versioned	If set to true, the version part will not be removed from the java component name mapping and instead a versioned name is used. That is, in the case above, a java component org.springframework.security:spring-security-aspects:3.2.2.RELEASE/java would be mapped. This is useful if "non-default" versions are required.
scope	Any of RUNTIME, COMPILE, PROVIDED, SYSTEM, TEST. Corresponds to the corresponding Maven dependency scopes. If set, non-optional dependencies of the respective scope will be traversed to resolve dependencies.
excluded	Exclusions on the dependency graph.

Handling the impact of PROVIDED references¶

At times, Maven provided artifacts require the presence of artifacts on the classpath that are expected to be required by the environment - most typically this is true for Web framework w.r.t the Servlet API.

In that case, it is simplest to create a Z2 project representation that includes all related artifacts (or include directly). In order to simplify this include process, includes may be specified to be transitively following Java component references by adding a corresponding query modifier to the include definition:

java.publicIncludes=\
    com.vaadin:vaadin-server?expand=true

Modularising Maven Dependencies¶

At times, it is useful to not have all required dependency roots in one component declaration but rather allow some modularization-friendly spread out declaration of dependency roots within a system. This is implemented by the fragment approach.

For example, an addon may define additional references, but in order to be reusable, it should not dictate what source to resolve those dependencies from. For example, this mvnFragment is the fragment of the Spring Add-on:

#
# A fragment adding Maven dependencies
#
com.zfabrik.component.type=com.zfabrik.mvncr.fragment

#
# adds to default repository
#

mvncr.component=\
   environment/mavenDefault

mvncr.roots=\
    org.springframework:spring-context-support:4.0.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework:spring-context:4.0.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework:spring-aspects:4.0.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework:spring-tx:4.0.2.RELEASE,\
    org.springframework:spring-orm:4.0.2.RELEASE,\
        (....)

Fragments are useful beyond separation of dependency and source repository separation. As conflict resolution will always happen within the scope of one Maven component repository, merging roots from different fragments for one repository is more consistent (in terms of conflict resolution) than having different maven repository declaration. In fact, in most cases having one Maven Component Repository will be the only manageable approach.

In order to add a fragment to a Maven Component Repository declare a component of type com.zfabrik.mvncr.fragment with the following properties

name	meaning	default
mvncr.component	The component name (or a comma-separated list of component names) of MVNCR declarations this fragment adds to or a fragment adding to some other mvncr	n.a.
mvncr.roots	As above. Will be merged with the repo this fragment adds to	n.a.
mvncr.managed	As above. Will be merged with the repo this fragment adds to	n.a.
mvncr.excluded	As above. Will be merged with the repo this fragment adds to	n.a.

Development Support¶

When running in Development mode, the repository will also provide the source (classifier) artifact if available, so that the Eclipsoid plugins will provide source code attachments to the development environment whenever possible during classpath resolution.

References¶

• Main Javadoc: MvnRepositoryResource

To Dos¶

1. Handling of SNAPSHOT-Versions to be revisited