Use Maven to automate tasks for the Liberty profile

Apache Maven is a software project management tool based on the concept of a project object model (POM). We can use the Maven plug-in provided by the Liberty profile to manage the server and applications.

The Maven plug-in for the Liberty profile is located in the WebSphere Application Server Developer Community (WASdev) Maven repository. To use the Maven plug-in for Liberty, we must make sure the WASdev plug-in repository is specified in the pom.xml file of the project. The following example shows how to configure this repository and enable liberty-maven-plugin in your project.

<project>
    ...
    <pluginRepositories>
        <!-- Configure WASdev repository -->
        <pluginRepository>
            <id>WASdev</id>
            <name>WASdev Repository</name>
            <url>http://public.dhe.ibm.com/ibmdl/export/pub/software/websphere/wasdev/maven/repository/</url>
            <layout>default</layout>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>false</enabled>
            </snapshots>
            <releases>
                <enabled>true</enabled>
            </releases>
        </pluginRepository>
    </pluginRepositories>
    ...
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <!-- Enable liberty-maven-plugin -->
            <plugin>
                <groupId>com.ibm.websphere.wlp.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>liberty-maven-plugin</artifactId> 
                <version>1.0</version>
                <!-- Specify configuration, executions for liberty-maven-plugin --> 
                ...         
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>       
    ...    
</project>

The Liberty Maven plug-in must be configured with Liberty profile server installation information. The installation information can be specified as an existing installation directory, a compressed archive, or as a Maven artifact.

• Configure with existing installation directory.

  Use the serverHome parameter to specify the directory of an existing Liberty profile server installation. For example:

          ...
          <plugin>
              <groupId>com.ibm.websphere.wlp.maven.plugins</groupId>
              <artifactId>liberty-maven-plugin</artifactId> 
              <version>1.0</version>
              <configuration>
                  <serverHome>/opt/ibm/wlp</serverHome>
              </configuration>
          </plugin>
          ...

• Configure with compressed archive.

  Use the assemblyArchive parameter to specify a compressed archive containing Liberty profile server files. For example:

          ...
          <plugin>
              <groupId>com.ibm.websphere.wlp.maven.plugins</groupId>
              <artifactId>liberty-maven-plugin</artifactId> 
              <version>1.0</version>
              <configuration>
                  <assemblyArchive>/opt/ibm/wlp.zip</assemblyArchive>
              </configuration>
          </plugin>
          ...

• Configure with Maven artifact name.

  Use the assemblyArtifact parameter to specify the name of the Maven artifact containing Liberty profile server files. For example:

          ...
          <plugin>
              <groupId>com.ibm.websphere.wlp.maven.plugins</groupId>
              <artifactId>liberty-maven-plugin</artifactId> 
              <version>1.0</version>
              <configuration>
                  <assemblyArtifact> 
                      <groupId>com.ibm.ws.liberty.test</groupId> 
                      <artifactId>liberty-test-server</artifactId>
                      <version>1.0</version>
                      <type>zip</type>
                  </assemblyArtifact>        
              </configuration>
          </plugin>
          ...

  For more information on installing Liberty profile server as a Maven artifact, see Installation as a Maven artifact.

We can use the provided Maven plug-in to create, start, stop, and package a Liberty profile server, and test the application on the Liberty profile. Each task is represented by a specific goal in Maven.

Subtopics

• Maven goal - liberty:start-server
  We can use the liberty:start-server goal to start a Liberty profile server in the file system.

• Maven goal - liberty:create-server
  We can use the liberty:create-server goal to create a Liberty profile server.

• Maven goal - liberty:package-server
  We can use the liberty:package-server goal to package a Liberty profile server.

• Maven goal - liberty:stop-server
  We can use the liberty:stop-server goal to stop a Liberty profile server.

• Maven goal - liberty:deploy
  We can use the liberty:deploy goal to deploy an application to a Liberty profile server.

• Maven goal - liberty:undeploy
  We can use the liberty:undeploy goal to remove an application from a Liberty profile server.

• Maven goal - liberty:install-apps
  We can use the liberty:install-apps goal to copy one or more applications to a Liberty profile server.

Parent topic: Administer the Liberty profile from the command prompt

Reference:
The Apache Maven project

Installation as a Maven artifact