Deploy to JBoss using Cargo

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.

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