[jira] Created: (MNG-4455) Pluggable Artifact types

[Kek (JIRA)]

Pluggable Artifact types
------------------------

                 Key: MNG-4455
                 URL: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MNG-4455
             Project: Maven 2
          Issue Type: Improvement
          Components: Artifacts and Repositories
            Reporter: Kek


First I want to thank to authors of great tool like Maven is.
And now my wish for Maven improvement:
Last week I try to make my first maven plugin to add support for my proprietary 
packaging, the inspiration was from 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1427722/how-do-i-create-a-new-packaging-type-for-maven.
 

This works fine, but I need support following scenario:

1) In Project-X  add dependency on Artifact-Y with packaging/type set to 
"MyArchive"
2) Maven resolves this dependency and downloads the artifact to local repository
3) When compilation or testing phase occures, the Artifact-Y:MyArchive should 
be unpacked to some location (when not already unpacked) and the location 
should be added as classpathElement to project classpath. 

I know, there is some possibility to use unpack-dependencies goal, but I need 
to unpack the dependency only ones and share it in multi-module project 
environment. And second problem is how to modify classpath to add the unpacked 
location. I found many questions about this functionality on many forums, but 
no solution. Many people want to add some folder to classpath, but no way. 
There was one - the system scope in dependency specification, but currently it 
does not support folders in path.


So for my solution I create some specialized Mojo for this with following 
hack-code:
   
Set<Artifact> artSet=project.getDependencyArtifacts();
    for(Artifact art:artSet){
      if("MyArchive".equals(art.getType())){
        File sharedFolder = new File("\\\\temp\\maven-shared")
        UnpackUtility.unpack(art.getFile(),sharedFolder);
        art.setFile(sharedFolder);
        art.setResolved(true);
      }
    }

This works fine, but when I use this in M2Eclipse plugin, then the folder is 
not added to project classpath, because there is not my Mojo plugin executed 
during classpath resolution.

I look at m2eclipse source codes and to Maven2 and Maven3 source codes and in 
my opinion the best way how to add support for this kind of issues ( when 
somebody want to define its own type of Artifact and provide some plugable 
logic for its resolution/initialization) will be:

1) add and call ArtifactHandler.getClassPathFile() instead of 
Artifact.getFile() to obtain reference to file or directory to be added to 
classpath  - the ArtifactHandler could provide specialized implementation for 
different Artifact types as supported in current version.

2) OR add some support for plugable Artifact realizations by type, in current 
versions there is DefaultArtifactFactory used for Artifact creation like :

ArtifactHandler handler = artifactHandlerManager.getArtifactHandler( type );
return new DefaultArtifact( groupId, artifactId, versionRange, desiredScope, 
type, classifier, handler,optional );

The code should be changed to:

ArtifactHandler handler = artifactHandlerManager.getArtifactHandler( type );
return handler.createArtifact( groupId, artifactId, versionRange, desiredScope, 
type, classifier,optional );

Or the ArtifactFactory should be pluggable by Artifact-type in the same way as 
ArtifactHandler.
Or some other solution.

I could contribute these changes to Maven, but I'm not sure, what is the 
prefered way to follow Maven architecture ideas.




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