Posted on The Cargo plugin for Maven has the following uses:
- to start containers for integration and functional tests
- to start containers for applications that require a container to be started (Plugins for IDEs, etc)
- as a framework to manipulate J2EE Module file including container-specific descriptors.
- to generate container configurations for deployment.
One of the nice things about Cargo is that it can be used to download a container, so that manual installation is not necessary. To configure Cargo to download JBoss (for example), add the following to your pom.xml (under <build><plugins>, not <build><pluginManagement>):
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.cargo</groupId>
<artifactId>cargo-maven2-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<wait>false</wait>
<container>
<containerId>jboss4x</containerId>
<zipUrlInstaller>
<url>
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/jboss/jboss-4.0.2.zip
</url>
<installDir>${installDir}</installDir>
</zipUrlInstaller>
</container>
<configuration>
<home>
${project.build.directory}/jboss4x/container
</home>
</configuration>
</configuration>
</plugin>
You can then run the command
mvn package deploy cargo:start
to fire up the container with your packaged code. It will take a while the first time this is run, as it has to download the zip file from the URL.
mvn cargo:stop
will stop the container.
If you want to use Cargo to start prior to running integration tests, and to stop afterwards, add the following:
<executions>
<execution>
<id>start-container</id>
<phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
<goals>
<goal>start</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
<execution>
<id>stop-container</id>
<phase>post-integration-test</phase>
<goals>
<goal>stop</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
The Cargo JBoss container also allows for hot deploy. This can be done by simply running the command
mvn package cargo:deploy
while the container is started.
Tip: when combined with How to Skip the Maven ‘test’ Phase, the hot deploy takes a lot less time than running ‘mvn package deploy’ and starting the container manually.
