Maven2 + GWT 1.5.3 + all platforms + tests

I think I finally managed our Maven setup to work.

Requirements:

• Pom should work out of the box, not requiring GWT installation beforehand

Versions used:

• GWT 1.5.3
• Maven 2.0.9

Solution:

• I downloaded the three distribution files from Goolge,
• deleted the doc and sample folders
• re-packaged them as jar files (gwt-dist-windows.jar, gwt-dist-linux.jar and gwt-dist-mac.jar)
• deployed them to our public maven repository http://semweb4j.org/repo/com/google/gwt as
  com.google.gwt
  dist-windows
  1.5.3

In the pom.xml we need to find out on which platform we are. We use the following carefully crafted snipped to distinguish properly between windows, mac and linux. Note the subtle variations of using "name" or "family".

<!--  http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVENUSER/Profiles -->
<profiles>

<profile>
 <id>mac</id>
 <activation>
  <os>
   <family>mac</family>
  </os>
 </activation>
 <properties>
  <os>mac</os>
 </properties>
</profile>
<profile>
 <id>linux</id>
 <activation>
  <os>
   <name>linux</name>
  </os>
 </activation>
 <properties>
  <os>linux</os>
 </properties>
</profile>
<profile>
 <id>windows</id>
 <activation>
  <os>
   <family>windows</family>
  </os>
 </activation>
 <properties>
  <os>windows</os>
 </properties>
 <dependencies>
  <dependency>
   <groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>
   <artifactId>dev-${os}</artifactId>
   <version>${gwtVersion}</version>
   <scope>system</scope>
   <systemPath>
    ${basedir}/gwt/gwt-${os}-${gwtVersion}/gwt-dev-${os}.jar
   </systemPath>
  </dependency>
 </dependencies>
</profile>
</profiles>

Note the profiles achieves two things:

• Set the ${os} property (this cannot be achieved otherwise)
• Add a dependency to the gwt-dev jar - which must reside in the same directoy as some other OS-specific files.

We still need to make sure that the OS-specific part is at the right place (here: ${basedir}/gwt ) at the right time (here: before using the dependencies for compile or test).

Next we need to declare the GWT specific dependencies in the pom. We simply uploaded those to our public maven repository as well (http://semweb4j.org/repo)

<!-- gwt dependencies -->
<dependency>
<groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>
<artifactId>gwt-user</artifactId>
<version>${gwtVersion}</version>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

<dependency>
<groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>
<artifactId>gwt-servlet</artifactId>
<version>${gwtVersion}</version>
</dependency>

Now comes the clever part:

<dependency>
<groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>
<artifactId>dist-${os}</artifactId>
<version>${gwtVersion}</version>
</dependency>

This instructs maven to fetch our special GWT-dist jar. We also need to unpack it at the right time, which is done here, in :

<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
 <execution>
  <id>unpack-gwt</id>
  <phase>generate-sources</phase>
  <goals>
   <goal>unpack</goal>
  </goals>
  <configuration>
   <artifactItems>
    <artifactItem>
     <groupId>com.google.gwt</groupId>
     <artifactId>dist-${os}</artifactId>
     <version>1.5.3</version>
     <type>jar</type>
     <overWrite>true</overWrite>
     <outputDirectory>
      ${basedir}/gwt
     </outputDirectory>
    </artifactItem>
   </artifactItems>
   <!-- other configurations here -->
  </configuration>
 </execution>
</executions>
</plugin>

Together these settings achieve our goals. Feedback welcome.

Sources considered can be found in delicious, tagged with maven2+gwt.