Structured Build Layout and Pomless Builds

Structured Build Layout

A structured build layout usually has the following folders, even though you might not use all of them depending on your project:

• root folder - this usually contains your parent pom where you configure the plugins to use
  • bundles (or plugins) - this contains your bundles that make up your application
    • bundle1
    • bundle2
    • ...
  • features - this folder will contain any features that structure your bundles into user installable units
    • feature1
    • ...
  • sites - if you have any update-sites they go into this folder
    • my-site
    • ...
  • products - the products to assemble are located here
    • cool-product
    • ...
• target-platform.target the target platform that should be used

Pomless Builds

Given the above layout, Tycho now has a good knowledge about what your build artifacts are. In a traditional Maven build each module has to contain a pom.xml file. Tycho however can derive most of the information from other already existing files, if your project follows the above structured build layout.

• Add a folder called .mvn to the root
• Inside the .mvn folder place a file called extensions.xml with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<extensions>
   <extension>
      <groupId>org.eclipse.tycho</groupId>
      <artifactId>tycho-build</artifactId>
      <version>${tycho-version}</version>
   </extension>
</extensions>

• Create a file called maven.config in the .mvn folder with the following content (adjust the version accordingly!):

-Dtycho-version=4.0.10

• Finally create a pom.xml with the following content in the root folder:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project
   xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"
   xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
   <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
   <groupId> ... your desired group id ...</groupId>
   <artifactId>parent</artifactId>
   <version>1.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
   <packaging>pom</packaging>

   <modules>
      <module>bundles</module>
      <module>features</module>
      <module>sites</module>
      <module>products</module>
   </modules>

   <build>
      <plugins>
         <plugin>
            <groupId>org.eclipse.tycho</groupId>
            <artifactId>tycho-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>${tycho-version}</version>
            <extensions>true</extensions>
         </plugin>
         <plugin>
            <groupId>org.eclipse.tycho</groupId>
            <artifactId>target-platform-configuration</artifactId>
            <version>${tycho-version}</version>
            <configuration>
               <target>
                  <file>../../target-platform.target</file>
               </target>
            </configuration>
         </plugin>
      </plugins>
   </build>
</project>

• You can now run your build with mvn verify.