Develop Reference

How to execute newly developed maven plugin in the same project

I have a maven project with a couple of child modules. One is a new maven plugin. Another one is a test module where I want to run my newly developed plugin to ensure that it works fine.
In the test module I do a normal reference to my plugin: build > plugins > plugin > <definition of my plugin>. And then if I executed mvn clean test it works fine. The plugin is being compiled and later, in the next module it is executed.
But there are a couple of problems with this setup:
When I do mvn clean execution fails with plugin cannot be resolved as the second module does not have even compiled version of the plugin.
In IDE (Intellij IDEA) reimport of maven modules fails with the same problem.
I do not want to do mvn install to have it locally so the dependencies are resolved as I do changes quite frequently and do not want to reinstall it every time.
I do not want to write integration tests instead of running the plugin directly as I want a realistic test and moreover, the plugin setup is quite tricky and would be hard to replicate that in a test.
I thought that I could use systemPath to reference the plugin but I am not sure if that will work and how to set it up.

Running JUnit tests together with Java project

I'm writing code in Intellij and have a JUnit test class included in a project and i understand that running of JUnit should always be done at build time.
Is there a way to first run the JUnit and only if there were no test error run the project itself ? I want them to run together with 1 click (NOT run them seperately/manually).
Also, i would like the above to work even when the project is packed as a .jar file.
How can it be done ?
Thanks !

In Intellij:
Run -> Edit Configurations
Create a JUnit configuration for your tests
Create a Run configuration for your project.
And on "Before Launch": Add -> Run Another Configuration and choose the one created at point 1.
It doesn't matter how your project is packed (jar, ...)
Normally this is done by using a build management tool like: maven, gradle, ant. In this way the build tool will run tests for you and stop if they fail.
With maven, it's just a command: mvn clean package exec:java which will compile code, build project, run tests and execute your code.
See example project: https://github.com/HaveACupOfJava/maven-jar-demo

Passing arguments to dependency eclipse plugins when using mvn-tycho

I am trying to write unit test cases for an eclipse plugin. Went through http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/EclipseTycho/article.html#run-the-build-with-the-tests and created a eclipse-test-plugin.
So, the test plugin (let's call is plugin-b) has a dependency on another plugin for which the test is written (plugin-a).
When I run mvn clean install, I can see that tycho-surefire is trying to run the tests and in the process is trying to launch plugin-a. However, plugin-a requires a set of VM args to start correctly. Am trying to pass the arguments like below:
mvn -Dabc.properties=bridge\bundles\com.blah.blah.blah.blah.bridge\abc.properties clean install
but they aren't going through to plugin-a.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

Finally figured this out:
mvn clean install -Dtycho.testArgLine="-Dabc.properties=../../bundles/com.blah.blah.blah.blah.bridge/abc.properties"
That'll pass the system properties to the test runtime.

why sonar:sonar needs mvn install before?

official documentation http://docs.sonarqube.org/display/SONAR/Analyzing+with+Maven says that the proper way of invoking sonar is:
mvn clean install -DskipTests=true
mvn sonar:sonar
but doesn't say why. how does sonar work? does it need compiled classes? so why not just mvn clean compile? or does it need a jar file? so why not just mvn clean package? what exactly does sonar plugin?

Explanation from a SonarSource team member:
In a multi-module build an aggregator plugin can't resolve dependencies from target folder. So you have two options:
mvn clean install && mvn sonar:sonar as two separate processes
mvn clean package sonar:sonar as a single reactor
I was surprised too, so I made a tweet an received the following answer from the official Maven account:
If the plugin is not designed to use the target/classes folder as a substitute, then yes you would need to have installed to get the jar when running *in a different session*. Complain to the plugin author if they force you to use install without foo reason [ed - #connolly_s]

The SonarQube analyzer indeed needs compiled classes (e.g for Findbugs rules, coverage). And since by default it executes tests itself, the compile phase can skip tests.

You can run SonarQube as part of a single Maven command if you meet some requirements:
As Mithfindel mentions, some SonarQube plugins need to analyze .class files. And if you run unit tests outside of SonarQube, then of course the testing plugins must read output from the test phase.
Got integration tests? Then you need to run after the integration-test phase.
If you want to run SonarQube as a true quality gate then you absolutely must run it before the deploy phase.
One solution is to just attach SonarQube to run after the package phase. Then you can get a full build with a simple clean install or clean deploy. Most people do not do this because SonarQube is time-consuming, but the incremental mode added in 4.0 and greatly improved in the upcoming 4.2 solves this.
As far as the official documentation goes, it's a lot easier to say "build and then run sonar:sonar" then it is to say, "open your POM, add a build element for the sonar-maven-plugin, attach it to verify, etc".
One caveat. SonarQube requires Java 6, so if you're building against JDK 1.5 (still common in large organizations), the analysis will have to happen in a separate Maven invocation with a newer JDK selected. We solved this issue with custom Maven build wrapper.

Running unit tests before building stage in multi-module maven project

I have a multi-module maven project. In every module there are unit tests. When I make clean install tests run before every module and if all tests in one module are success it build successfully. If one test failure all other tests in that module run successfully (or some run successfully, other failed). The build of module in what the first failure unit test is placed failed. Other modules are skipped.
I want such thing: first to run all unit tests in all modules, and after that if there is no failed tests build all modules, or if there is one or more failed tests in one or mode modules skip building of all modules. Can you help me with it?

run:
mvn clean test
mvn install -Dmaven.test.skip=true
note, if you have inter-module dependencies (which i assume you do), you probably can't really do this, as you will need to build the dependent jars before you can run the tests in the other module.

AFAIK its impossible in maven. You are trying to change a maven build lifecycle which is not allowed in maven. However there are a couple of configuration parameters you can pass to maven and this will affect the testing.
mvn install -Dmaven.test.skip
This won't run unit tests at all
mvn install -Dmaven.test.failure.ignore=true
This will cause maven to not stop and proceed the module building process even if there were failures during the test phase.
Hope, this helps

The problem is:
the modules probably have dependencies upon each other, and to resolve those dependencies, you have to build the modules in order, or they won't compile. So there's no sane solution to your problem.
Insane solutions would somehow aggregate the sources (and external dependencies) from all child projects and run compile and test on that conglomerate, but it would be such a monstrous hack that I'm glad they didn't do it.