Maven: The Complete Reference
   - 3.5. Project Relationships

3.5. Project Relationships

One of the compelling reasons to use Maven is that it makes the process of tracking down dependencies (and dependencies of dependencies) very easy. When a project depends on an artifact produced by another project we say that this artifact is a dependency. In the case of a Java project, this can be as simple as a project depending on an external dependency like Log4J or JUnit. While dependencies can model external dependencies, they can also manage the dependencies between a set of related projects. If project-a depends on project-b, Maven is smart enough to know that project-b must be built before project-a.

Relationships are not only about dependencies and figuring out what one project needs to be able to build an artifact. Maven can model the relationship of a project to a parent, and the relationship of a project to submodules. This section gives an overview of the various relationships between projects and how such relationships are configured.

3.5.1. More on Coordinates

Coordinates define a unique location for a project. Projects are related to one another using Maven Coordinates. project-a doesn’t just depend on project-b; a project with a groupId, artifactId, and version depends on another project with a groupId, artifactId, and version. To review, a Maven Coordinate is made up of three components:

groupId
A groupId groups a set of related artifacts. Group identifiers generally resemble a Java package name. For example, the groupId org.apache.maven is the base groupId for all artifacts produced by the Apache Maven project. Group identifiers are translated into paths in the Maven Repository; for example, the org.apache.maven groupId can be found in /maven2/org/apache/maven on repo1.maven.org.
artifactId
The artifactId is the project’s main identifier. When you generate an artifact, this artifact is going to be named with the artifactId. When you refer to a project, you are going to refer to it using the artifactId. The artifactId, groupId combination must be unique. In other words, you can’t have two separate projects with the same artifactId and groupId; artifactId s are unique within a particular groupId.

Note

While '.'s are commonly used in groupId s, you should try to avoid using them in artifactId s. This can cause issues when trying to parse a fully qualified name down into the subcomponents.

version
When an artifact is released, it is released with a version number. This version number is a numeric identifier such as "1.0", "1.1.1", or "1.1.2-alpha-01". You can also use what is known as a snapshot version. A snapshot version is a version for a component which is under development, snapshot version numbers always end in SNAPSHOT; for example, "1.0-SNAPSHOT", "1.1.1-SNAPSHOT", and "1-SNAPSHOT". the section called “Version Build Numbers” introduces versions and version ranges.

There is a fourth, less-used qualifier:

classifier
You would use a classifier if you were releasing the same code but needed to produce two separate artifacts for technical reasons. For example, if you wanted to build two separate artifacts of a JAR, one compiled with the Java 1.4 compiler and another compiled with the Java 6 compiler, you might use the classifier to produce two separate JAR artifacts under the same groupId:artifactId:version combination. If your project uses native extensions, you might use the classifier to produce an artifact for each target platform. Classifiers are commonly used to package up an artifact’s sources, JavaDocs or binary assemblies.

When we talk of dependencies in this book, we often use the following shorthand notation to describe a dependency: groupId:artifactId:version. To refer to the 2.5 release of the Spring Framework, we would refer to it as org.springframework:spring:2.5. When you ask Maven to print out a list of dependencies with the Maven Dependency plugin, you will also see that Maven tends to print out log messages with this shorthand dependency notation.

3.5.2. Project Inheritance

There are going to be times when you want a project to inherit values from a parent POM. You might be building a large system, and you don’t want to have to repeat the same dependency elements over and over again. You can avoid repeating yourself if your projects make use of inheritance via the parent element. When a project specifies a parent, it inherits the information in the parent project’s POM. It can then override and add to the values specified in this parent POM.

All Maven POMs inherit values from a parent POM. If a POM does not specify a direct parent using the parent element, that POM will inherit values from the Super POM. Project Inheritance shows the parent element of project-a which inherits the POM defined by the a-parent project.

Project Inheritance. 

<project>
    <parent>
        <groupId>com.training.killerapp</groupId>
        <artifactId>a-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    </parent>
    <artifactId>project-a</artifactId>
    ...
</project>

Running mvn help:effective-pom in project-a would show a POM that is the result of merging the Super POM with the POM defined by a-parent and the POM defined in project-a. The implicit and explicit inheritance relationships for project-a are shown in Figure 3.3, “Project Inheritance for a-parent and project-a”.

figs/web/pom_inheritance.png

Figure 3.3. Project Inheritance for a-parent and project-a


When a project specifies a parent project, Maven uses that parent POM as a starting point before it reads the current project’s POM. It inherits everything, including the groupId and version number. You’ll notice that project-a does not specify either, both groupId and version are inherited from a-parent. With a parent element, all a POM really needs to define is an artifactId. This isn’t mandatory, project-a could have a different groupId and version, but by not providing values, Maven will use the values specified in the parent POM. If you start using Maven to manage and build large multi-module projects, you will often be creating many projects which share a common groupId and version.

When you inherit a POM, you can choose to live with the inherited POM information or to selectively override it. The following is a list of items a Maven POM inherits from its parent POM:

  • identifiers (at least one of groupId or artifactId must be overridden.)
  • dependencies
  • developers and contributors
  • plugin lists
  • reports lists
  • plugin executions (executions with matching ids are merged)
  • plugin configuration

When Maven inherits dependencies, it will add dependencies of child projects to the dependencies defined in parent projects. You can use this feature of Maven to specify widely used dependencies across all projects which inherit from a top-level POM. For example, if your system makes universal use of the Log4J logging framework, you can list this dependency in your top-level POM. Any projects which inherit POM information from this project will automatically have Log4J as a dependency. Similarly, if you need to make sure that every project is using the same version of a Maven plugin, you can list this Maven plugin version explicitly in a top-level parent POM’s pluginManagement section.

Maven assumes that the parent POM is available from the local repository, or available in the parent directory (../pom.xml) of the current project. If neither location is valid this default behavior may be overridden via the relativePath element. For example, some organizations prefer a flat project structure where a parent project’s pom.xml isn’t in the parent directory of a child project. It might be in a sibling directory to the project. If your child project were in a directory ./project-a and the parent project were in a directory named ./a-parent, you could specify the relative location of parent-a's POM with the following configuration:

<project>
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook</groupId>
        <artifactId>a-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <relativePath>../a-parent/pom.xml</relativePath>
    </parent>
    <artifactId>project-a</artifactId>
</project>











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