Maven, Eclipse, and chained project builds

[Gregory Gerard <gg...@ggerard.com>]

Hello,

 

Longtime listener, first time caller.

 

Seriously, we're getting ready to split our project out into multiple
projects.

 

Here's how we'd like to use and build and I believe Maven can support this
but I'm not familiar enough to answer authoritatively.

 

1.                   Build a root project (say a webapp or other
application) will build dependent libraries if necessary. That is, if WebApp
depends upon the A and B project libraries, A and B will be built (if
necessary) and A's and B's dependencies will also be rebuilt (again if
necessary)

2.                   These dependencies are expressed to Eclipse so that
Eclipse will rebuild dependent projects if necessary without having to
invoke special stuff (e.g. it's enough that I have the Build Automatically
flag checked in Eclipse, I don't have to drop down and do special ANT
builds).

3.                   We also use MyEclipseIDE to do our WebApps. Makes
things nice and easy that way. Since it allows one to debug running
application servers and hot code replace as you find problems or with to
make adjustments, I can't afford to lose that feature.

4.                   We'd also like to Eclipse plugins from our libraries. I
don't think Maven rules this out but I don't see any obvious integration
points for working with plugins/features/RCP builds and Maven.

 

Can anyone point me to a canonical set of projects that highlights these
techniques as fully as possible?

 

Thanks,

greg