Using Maven to automate tasks for Liberty

Apache Maven is a software project management tool based on the concept of a project object model (POM). You can use the Maven plug-in that is provided for Liberty to manage the server and applications.

Before you begin

Important: An open source Liberty Maven plug-in with more goals for Liberty is available. The open source Liberty Maven plug-in has a different group ID, net.wasdev.wlp.maven.plugins, than the original Liberty plug-in. Documentation on using Maven to automate Liberty tasks and the available Maven goals is located and updated in GitHub.

The open source Maven plug-in for Liberty is available in the Maven Central repository and no longer requires plug-in repository configuration in the pom.xml file. The following examples show how to configure the liberty-maven-plugin in your project.

The Liberty Maven plug-in must be configured with the Liberty server installation information. The installation information can be specified as an existing installation directory, a compressed archive, or as a Maven artifact.
  • Configure with existing installation directory.
    Use the installDirectory parameter to specify the directory of an existing Liberty server installation. For example:
            ...
            <plugin>
                <groupId>net.wasdev.wlp.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>liberty-maven-plugin</artifactId> 
                <version>1.2.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <installDirectory>/opt/ibm/wlp</installDirectory>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            ...
  • Configure with compressed archive.
    Use the assemblyArchive parameter to specify a compressed archive that contains Liberty server files. For example:
            ...
            <plugin>
                <groupId>net.wasdev.wlp.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>liberty-maven-plugin</artifactId> 
                <version>1.2.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <assemblyArchive>/opt/ibm/wlp.zip</assemblyArchive>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            ...
  • Configure with Maven artifact name.
    Use the assemblyArtifact parameter to specify the name of the Maven artifact that contains Liberty server files. For example:
            ...
            <plugin>
                <groupId>net.wasdev.wlp.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>liberty-maven-plugin</artifactId> 
                <version>1.2.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <assemblyArtifact> 
                        <groupId>com.ibm.ws.liberty.test</groupId> 
                        <artifactId>liberty-test-server</artifactId>
                        <version>1.2.1</version>
                        <type>zip</type>
                    </assemblyArtifact>         
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            ...
    For more information on installing Liberty server as a Maven artifact, see Liberty: Installation as a Maven artifact.

About this task

You can use the provided Maven plug-in to create, start, stop, and package a Liberty server, and test your application on Liberty. Each task is represented by a specific goal in Maven.


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