4.6 Ant and Maven - Reference Documentation
Authors: Graeme Rocher, Peter Ledbrook, Marc Palmer, Jeff Brown, Luke Daley, Burt Beckwith
Version: 2.0.4
4.6 Ant and Maven
If all the other projects in your team or company are built using a standard build tool such as Ant or Maven, you become the black sheep of the family when you use the Grails command line to build your application. Fortunately, you can easily integrate the Grails build system into the main build tools in use today (well, the ones in use in Java projects at least).Ant Integration
When you create a Grails application with the create-app command, Grails doesn't automatically create an Antbuild.xml file but you can generate one with the integrate-with command:
grails integrate-with --antThis creates a build.xml file containing the following targets:
clean- Cleans the Grails applicationcompile- Compiles your application's source codetest- Runs the unit testsrun- Equivalent to "grails run-app"war- Creates a WAR filedeploy- Empty by default, but can be used to implement automatic deployment
ant war
<taskdef name="grailsTask" classname="grails.ant.GrailsTask" classpathref="grails.classpath"/>
| Attribute | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| home | The location of the Grails installation directory to use for the build. | Yes, unless classpath is specified. |
| classpathref | Classpath to load Grails from. Must include the "grails-bootstrap" artifact and should include "grails-scripts". | Yes, unless home is set or you use a classpath element. |
| script | The name of the Grails script to run, e.g. "TestApp". | Yes. |
| args | The arguments to pass to the script, e.g. "-unit -xml". | No. Defaults to "". |
| environment | The Grails environment to run the script in. | No. Defaults to the script default. |
| includeRuntimeClasspath | Advanced setting: adds the application's runtime classpath to the build classpath if true. | No. Defaults to true. |
classpath- The build classpath (used to load Gant and the Grails scripts).compileClasspath- Classpath used to compile the application's classes.runtimeClasspath- Classpath used to run the application and package the WAR. Typically includes everything in @compileClasspath.testClasspath- Classpath used to compile and run the tests. Typically includes everything inruntimeClasspath.
home attribute and put your own dependencies in the lib directory, then you don't even need to use any of them. For an example of their use, take a look at the generated Ant build file for new apps.Maven Integration
Grails provides integration with Maven 2 with a Maven plugin. The current Maven plugin is based on but supersedes the version created by Octo, who did a great job with the original.Preparation
In order to use the new plugin, all you need is Maven 2 installed and set up. This is because you no longer need to install Grails separately to use it with Maven!The Maven 2 integration for Grails has been designed and tested for Maven 2.0.9 and above. It will not work with earlier versions.
The default mvn setup DOES NOT supply sufficient memory to run the Grails environment. We recommend that you add the following environment variable setting to prevent poor performance:export MAVEN_OPTS="-Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=256"
Creating a Grails Maven Project
To create a Mavenized Grails project simply run the following command:mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeGroupId=org.grails \
-DarchetypeArtifactId=grails-maven-archetype \
-DarchetypeVersion=1.3.2 \
-DgroupId=example -DartifactId=my-app<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<source>1.5</source>
<target>1.5</target>
</configuration>
</plugin><plugin>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<source>1.6</source>
<target>1.6</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>cd my-app mvn initialize
if you see a message similar to this:Now you have a Grails application all ready to go. The plugin integrates into the standard build cycle, so you can use the standard Maven phases to build and package your app:you need to add the plugins manually to application.properties:Resolving plugin JAR dependencies … :: problems summary :: :::: WARNINGS module not found: org.hibernate#hibernate-core;3.3.1.GAthen runplugins.hibernate=2.0.0 plugins.tomcat=2.0.0and the hibernate and tomcat plugins will be installed.mvn compile
mvn clean , mvn compile , mvn test , mvn package , mvn install .You can also use some of the Grails commands that have been wrapped as Maven goals:
grails:create-controller- Calls the create-controller commandgrails:create-domain-class- Calls the create-domain-class commandgrails:create-integration-test- Calls the create-integration-test commandgrails:create-pom- Creates a new Maven POM for an existing Grails projectgrails:create-script- Calls the create-script commandgrails:create-service- Calls the create-service commandgrails:create-taglib- Calls the create-tag-lib commandgrails:create-unit-test- Calls the create-unit-test commandgrails:exec- Executes an arbitrary Grails command line scriptgrails:generate-all- Calls the generate-all commandgrails:generate-controller- Calls the generate-controller commandgrails:generate-views- Calls the generate-views commandgrails:install-plugin- Calls the install-plugin commandgrails:install-templates- Calls the install-templates commandgrails:list-plugins- Calls the list-plugins commandgrails:package- Calls the package commandgrails:run-app- Calls the run-app commandgrails:uninstall-plugin- Calls the uninstall-plugin command
mvn grails:helpMavenizing an existing project
Creating a new project is great way to start, but what if you already have one? You don't want to create a new project and then copy the contents of the old one over. The solution is to create a POM for the existing project using this Maven command (substitute the version number with the grails version of your existing project):mvn org.grails:grails-maven-plugin:1.3.2:create-pom -DgroupId=com.mycompany
mvn package. Note that you have to specify a group ID when creating the POM.You may also want to set target JDK to Java 6; see above.Adding Grails commands to phases
The standard POM created for you by Grails already attaches the appropriate core Grails commands to their corresponding build phases, so "compile" goes in the "compile" phase and "war" goes in the "package" phase. That doesn't help though when you want to attach a plugin's command to a particular phase. The classic example is functional tests. How do you make sure that your functional tests (using which ever plugin you have decided on) are run during the "integration-test" phase?Fear not: all things are possible. In this case, you can associate the command to a phase using an extra "execution" block:<plugin> <groupId>org.grails</groupId> <artifactId>grails-maven-plugin</artifactId> <version>1.3.2</version> <extensions>true</extensions> <executions> <execution> <goals> … </goals> </execution> <!-- Add the "functional-tests" command to the "integration-test" phase --> <execution> <id>functional-tests</id> <phase>integration-test</phase> <goals> <goal>exec</goal> </goals> <configuration> <command>functional-tests</command> </configuration> </execution> </executions> </plugin>
grails:exec goal, which can be used to run any Grails command. Simply pass the name of the command as the command system property, and optionally specify the arguments with the args property:
mvn grails:exec -Dcommand=create-webtest -Dargs=Book
Debugging a Grails Maven Project
Maven can be launched in debug mode using the "mvnDebug" command. To launch your Grails application in debug, simply run:mvnDebug grails:run-app
MAVEN_OPTS="-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=y,address=5005"
mvn grails:run-app
