Using Maven to build a Java Web Start application

Question

I'm new to almost all related things, but would like to build a Java Web Start application using Maven. I also need to repack a specific .jar (commons-httpclient-3.1.jar), or it won't sign with JarSigner (looks to be a common problem when I googled). Perhaps I could use this Maven plugin, but I don't even know how to setup the Maven repository.

I (might) need to:

• set up the Maven repository to be able to use the above plugin,
• configure the jnlp build using the plugin,
• take use of three .jars that we have developed (already built using Maven) and install along with the dependencies (such as slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar, spring-security-core-3.0.7.RELEASE.jar and a dozen or so others),
• also unpack and repack a specific .jar (repack using jar.exe, not zip since it doesn't work).

I much prefer examples to links to big chunks of documentation. :) Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You've probably figured this out by now, but plugin repositories are referenced with a separate configuration in your pom to the normal installation repositories.

e.g.

  <pluginRepositories>
    <pluginRepository>
      <id>central</id>
      <name>Maven Plugin Repository</name>
      <url>http://repo1.maven.org/maven2</url>
      <layout>default</layout>
      <snapshots>
        <enabled>false</enabled>
      </snapshots>
      <releases>
        <updatePolicy>never</updatePolicy>
      </releases>
    </pluginRepository>
  </pluginRepositories>

See here http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-the-pom.html

Answer 2

you can use a maven plugin for web start

Alternatively you can generate a war with the jnlp file inside (created manually)

You can even create a servlet that will create a jnlp (with stuff like get all jars in some lib directory) and return dynamically to the client.

The plugin should be in the maven repository, but I've never checked it...