Goal to execute a class in an arbitrary artifact outside of any specific project
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Key: MEXEC-76
URL: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MEXEC-76
Project: Maven 2.x Exec Plugin
Issue Type: New Feature
Components: java
Reporter: Dimitry Voytenko
The idea is to have a goal as part of 'exec" plugin for running Java "main"
classes similar to exec:java goal but w/o requiring a project (i.e.
@requiredProject = false). I.e. a goal that could run a main class in an
arbitrary artifact.
For instance, one could run Xalan's XSLT command line
(http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/commandline.html) like this:
java -classpath ... org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -IN foo.xml -XSL foo.xsl
-OUT foo.out
Instead, the new goal would allow to run:
mvn exec:java-ext -Dartifact=xalan:xalan:2.7.1
-DmainClass=org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process "-Dargs=-IN foo.xml -XSL foo.xsl -OUT
foo.out"
When this command is executed, the Maven will download and install Xalan from
central repository along with all its dependencies, build a separate
classloader using artifact/dependency information, find the class (Process) and
execute it's main method passing in the specified arguments. All these steps
will be done automatically by Maven and thus will take any issues from a user
that would otherwise be required (downloading binary distribution and all
dependencies, building classpath, etc). Essentially this would create a "zero"
footprint model for executing an arbitrary java main-class - all that is
necessary here is Maven itself.
The benefits of this model should be attractive. Besides simplifying
download/install/execute process, this is also a good code distribution model:
one could create a library, deploy it to enterprise-wide Maven repository and
execute it on any number of hosts via SSH w/o any additional actions.
P.S. This model is fairly simple and extensible. All of the Maven pieces are
already there and used successfully in this plugin and many others. The closest
example to this would be Groovy's Grape. The same execution there could look
like:
groovy.grape.Grape.grab(group:'xalan', module:'xalan', version:'2.7.1')
org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process.main("-IN", "foo.xml", "-XSL", "foo.xsl",
"-OUT", "foo.out")
Thus, again the idea seems straightforward and implementation should be fairly
simple as well. If you think this idea has legs I can volunteer to provide the
implementation code.
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