is maven-assembly-plugin effective in this case

Question

I have following project structure:

1. Project "parent-project" does not have any source file and has subprojects as "junit-wrapper","child1-test" and "child2-test".
2. Subproject "junit-wrapper" has only java source inside src/main/java and this is basically created to wrap all the dependencies and binaries under the hierarchy "parent-project".
3. Subproject "child1-test" and "child2-test" has no source files and only contains subprojects as "child1-env" and "child2-env".
4. Subproject "child1-env" and "child2-env" has only junits inside src/test/java.

I want to build a super jar(within junit-wrapper) by building parent pom.xml

I hope this is possible by using maven-assembly-plugin but don't know how to configure this in pom.xml. what should be my pom.xml or assembly.xml(on using plugin) entries in order to ensure this is achieved?

please suggest.

thanks.

Answer 1

To create a jar which contains test-classes the best solution is to use the maven-jar-plugin like this:

<project>
  <build>
    <plugins>
     <plugin>
       <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
       <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
       <version>2.2</version>
       <executions>
         <execution>
           <goals>
             <goal>test-jar</goal>
           </goals>
         </execution>
       </executions>
     </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

In other modules you can use the test-jar via the following dependency:

<project>
  ...
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.myco.app</groupId>
      <artifactId>foo</artifactId>
      <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
      <type>test-jar</type>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  ...
</project>

Answer 2

You will get your "uber-jar" when you include this configuration into the pom file of junit-wrapper:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>2.2.1</version>
      <executions>
        <execution>
          <id>make-assembly</id>
          <phase>package</phase>
          <goals>
            <goal>single</goal>
          </goals>
          <configuration>
            <descriptorRefs>
              <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
            </descriptorRefs>
          </configuration>
        </execution>
      </executions>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

An assembly descriptor (assembly.xml) is not necessary because the jar-with-dependencies descriptor is already available within the maven-assembly-plugin. Note that you should not execute the assembly plugin before the package phase. Otherwise the code of your maven module will not get packaged into your assembly.