Using Maven to create a new Tapestry 5.1 project

I've been digging deep into the (revised) Maven archetype plugin: the tool used to generate new projects from a template. The existing quickstart archetype had some glaring omissions, partially related to limitations of the old plugin. The new plugin makes many more things possible.

In the past, you needed to specify the new project's groupId, artifactId and other data on the command line. This process was so tedious and error prone that I advised wrapping it up in a Ruby script.

Now it's a bit easier, as Maven will ask you for any necessary properties:

$ mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeCatalog=http://tapestry.formos.com/maven-snapshot-repository
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] Searching repository for plugin with prefix: 'archetype'.
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Maven Default Project
[INFO]    task-segment: [archetype:generate] (aggregator-style)
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Preparing archetype:generate
[INFO] No goals needed for project - skipping
[INFO] Setting property: classpath.resource.loader.class => 'org.codehaus.plexus.velocity.ContextClassLoaderResourceLoader'.
[INFO] Setting property: velocimacro.messages.on => 'false'.
[INFO] Setting property: resource.loader => 'classpath'.
[INFO] Setting property: resource.manager.logwhenfound => 'false'.
[INFO] [archetype:generate]
[INFO] Generating project in Interactive mode
[INFO] No archetype defined. Using maven-archetype-quickstart (org.apache.maven.archetypes:maven-archetype-quickstart:1.0)
Choose archetype:
1: http://tapestry.formos.com/maven-snapshot-repository -> quickstart (Tapestry 5.1.0.0-SNAPSHOT Quickstart Project)
Choose a number:  (1): 1
[INFO] snapshot org.apache.tapestry:quickstart:5.1.0.0-SNAPSHOT: checking for updates from quickstart-repo
Define value for groupId: : com.formos 
Define value for artifactId: : demo1
Define value for version:  1.0-SNAPSHOT: : 
Define value for package:  com.formos: : com.formos.demo1.web
Confirm properties configuration:
groupId: com.formos
artifactId: demo1
version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
package: com.formos.demo1.web
 Y: : 
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 24 seconds
[INFO] Finished at: Sat Jan 31 13:12:31 PST 2009
[INFO] Final Memory: 8M/14M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
~/work
$ 

The key part is the -DarchetypeCatalog=http://tapestry.formos.com/maven-snapshot-repository, which points Maven at Tapestry's own nightly snapshot repository. It picks up a catalog file from there which points to the quickstart archetype stored inside the snapshot repository. No muss, no fuss.

Of course, the first time you run this, Maven has to download about 34MB of modules!

In any case, it works nicely. I put some extra effort in so that the archetype description clearly identifies the exact version of Tapestry.

The new quickstart archetype is much improved; it now includes a Layout component that wraps the page content using a free CSS layout, "concrete" (which has a Creative Commons license). In other words, your application will look good from day 1, though (of course) I'd expect you to throw away the layout subsequently. Anyway, this will answer some questions such as: "how do I use a Layout component?" and "how do I access a message catalog?"

I can see replacing the "concrete" layout with something more general, less blog-oriented (but that's beyond my CSS/HTML design skills!).

All of this is all usable right now. Have fun!