Skip to main content

Java Dependency Management with Ivy - Part II

Image
By
In Part I of Java Dependency Management with Ivy I looked at basic Ivy usage and configuration using Ant and the Ivy Eclipse plugin, IvyDE. I demonstrated how Ivy can be used to download modules (dependencies) from a repository, such as the Maven Repository and cache them locally, negating the need to check them into a source control system.

However there are some scenarios where the Maven repository is not suitable:

1.Your development team may not have direct access to the Maven repository or you want to prevent each module from being downloaded more than once.
2.You may want to restrict or specify the modules your development team has access to.
3.You want to use libraries such Microsoft's SQL Server JDBC driver or your own propriety JARs that are not hosted in the Maven repository.

Ivy and IvyDE can be easily configured to look at custom repositories. In this article I will discuss a way of setting up a local public repository and a shared repository, and how to reference them from Ivy and IvyDE.

In my previous article I also explained the difference between a repository and a cache. As I am going to look at repositories in a little more detail it is worth repeating the distinction. A cache is usually local. When you do a build, Ivy checks the cache to see if you already have the required modules. If you do, it uses them, otherwise it looks in one or more repositories for them and downloads them. Repositories can be local, but tend to be remote on the internet or on a central server in an organisation. Maven is a repository and stores a large number of modules.

More

Comments

  1. Tim O'Brien23 December 2009 at 02:44

    Instead of all this wheel reinvention, why not just use a repository manager?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Paul Grenyer23 December 2009 at 06:46

    I don't think I am reinventing the wheel, but yes part III will be about repository managers such as Nexus when I find the time to write it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Catalina-Ant for Tomcat 7

By
I recently upgraded from Tomcat 6 to Tomcat 7 and all of my Ant deployment scripts stopped working. I eventually worked out why and made the necessary changes, but there doesn’t seem to be a complete description of how to use Catalina-Ant for Tomcat 7 on the web so I thought I'd write one. To start with, make sure Tomcat manager is configured for use by Catalina-Ant. Make sure that manager-script is included in the roles for one of the users in TOMCAT_HOME/conf/tomcat-users.xml . For example: <tomcat-users> <user name="admin" password="s3cr£t" roles="manager-gui, manager-script "/> </tomcat-users> Catalina-Ant for Tomcat 6 was encapsulated within a single JAR file. Catalina-Ant for Tomcat 7 requires four JAR files. One from TOMCAT_HOME/bin : tomcat-juli.jar and three from TOMCAT_HOME/lib: catalina-ant.jar tomcat-coyote.jar tomcat-util.jar There are at least three ways of making the JARs available to Ant: Copy the JARs into th...
22 comments
Read more

Write Your Own Load Balancer: A worked Example

By
I was out walking with a techie friend of mine I’d not seen for a while and he asked me if I’d written anything recently. I hadn’t, other than an article on data sharing a few months before and I realised I was missing it. Well, not the writing itself, but the end result. In the last few weeks, another friend of mine, John Cricket , has been setting weekly code challenges via linkedin and his new website, https://codingchallenges.fyi/ . They were all quite interesting, but one in particular on writing load balancers appealed, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and write up a worked example. You’ll find my worked example below. The challenge itself is italics and voice is that of John Crickets. The Coding Challenge https://codingchallenges.fyi/challenges/challenge-load-balancer/ Write Your Own Load Balancer This challenge is to build your own application layer load balancer. A load balancer sits in front of a group of servers and routes client requests across all of the serv...
Post a Comment
Read more

Do software engineering professionals still read? - survey results

By
  In order to gauge the potential audience for my book, So you think you can lead a team? , I conducted a small survey of my colleagues, co-workers and anyone from Linked. I read regularly, for work and pleasure, and assumed everyone else did too but did the responses I received confirm this? I polled 173 people, all within the software engineering field (including Product, etc), with a range of ages and years of experience in their role. What surprised me the most was that the majority of people, young or old, just starting or seasoned, still prefer reading physical books to blogs or e-readers. It also seemed that the older and more experienced were the most keen in learning more, and reading to expand or update their knowledge.  When it comes to reading habits between different roles the survey showed that software engineers and team leads read more regularly for their career than other roles, with 55 years old and over and 16+ years experience being the biggest readers over...
3 comments
Read more