Moving to Maven from GNUMake

Question

I've been a long time user of the Make build system, but I have decided to begin learning the Maven build system. While I've read through most of the online docs, none seem to give me the analogies I'm looking for. I understand the system's lifecycle, but I have not see one reference to compile step dependencies. For example, I want to generate a JFlex grammar as part of the compile lifecycle step. Currently, I see no way of making that step a pre-compile phase step. Documentation seems to be limited on this. In general, the concept of step dependencies seem to be baked into Maven and require a plugin for any alteration. Is this the case? What am I missing, because currently the Maven build system seems very limited in how you can setup compilation steps.

Answer 1

You can do anything in Maven. It generally has a default way to do each thing, and then you can hook in and override if you want to do something special. Sometimes it takes a lot of Stack Overflowing and head scratching to figure it out.

There is even an official JFlex Maven plugin.

Whenever possible, find someone who has made a Maven plugin do what you want. Even if it isn't 100% right, it may at least give you an idea on how to make maven do something.

Minimal configuration

This configuration generates java code of a parser for all grammar files (.jflex , *.jlex , *.lex , .flex ) found in src/main/jflex/ and its sub-directories. The name and package of the generated Java source code are the ones defined in the grammar. The generated Java source code is placed in target/generated-source/jflex , in sub-directories following the Java convention on package names. pom.xml

<project>
  <!-- ... -->
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>de.jflex</groupId>
        <artifactId>jflex-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.6.0</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <goals>
              <goal>generate</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
    <!-- ... -->
  </build>
  <!-- ... -->
</project>

This feels like the maven way to do things. Put your stuff in the right folders (src/main/flex), and this plugin will automatically build it into your project. If you want to do fancier custom stuff, there are some options. but Maven is all about favoring convention over configuration.

Answer 2

To be frank I think that your current mindset maps much better to ant than to maven, and I would suggest starting with that.