Maven Development Tools

Maven Development Tools is a collection of m2e extensions that enables end-to-end debugging of Maven Plugins, Maven Core and their dependencies from m2e development workspace, without the need to install artifacts to the local Maven repository.

For Maven Plugin developers this provides ability to run and debug plugin directly from Eclipse workspace. Changes to plugin sources, pom.xml dependencies, etc, are picked up during next Run/Debug as Maven Build or Maven JUnit Test launch. Breakpoints and sources lookup will automatically work in plugin, plugin dependencies and maven runtime code.

For Maven Core developers this provides ability to run and debug maven directly from eclipse workspace. Changes to maven core source, dependencies, etc, are picked up during next Run-As Maven Build or Maven IT launch. Additionally, Run/Debug as 'Maven JUnit Test' launch configuration can be used to run majority of Maven Core integration tests directly from Eclipse workspace.

Prerequisites

• Eclipse Luna or newer, "standard" or "for java developers" distributions are recommended.
• m2e 1.6.0 or newer
• Maven 3.x runtime. m2e embedded, external and workspace runtimes are supported
• Maven Plugins using maven-plugin-plugin version 2.3 or newer.
• Debugging Maven Plugin integration tests requires maven-verifier version 1.5 or newer.

Do NOT use directories with spaces and other weird charactes for Eclipse installation!

Installation

There is currently no publicly available pre-built binaries (also see see #14).

Notes for Maven Plugin developers

• Use standard m2e project import wizards to import Maven Plugin projects in Eclipse workspace.
• Maven Plugin metadata, i.e., META-INF/maven/plugin.xml is generated automatically during workspace clean build only. Make sure to run Project->Clean after change mojo annotations.
• Workspace dependency resolution is disabled for Run/Debug as Maven Build by default. Enable it in launch configuration dialog to plugin from workspace.
• Use Run/Debug as 'Maven JUnit Test' launch configuration to run verifier-based integration tests from Eclipse workspace.

Notes for Maven Core developers

• Use standard m2e project import wizards to import Maven core sources in Eclipse workspace. New "Maven Workspace" installation will become available after the import.
• "Maven Workspace" installation can be used to Debug/Run as Maven Build (configured on Main launch configuration dialog tab) and 'Maven JUnit Test' (configured on Maven IT tab).
• Use Run/Debug as 'Maven JUnit Test' launch configuration to run core-it-suite integration tests from Eclipse workspace.

Known problems and limitations

• Only Verifier embedded mode is currently supported. Integration tests that require forked mode will either fail or breakpoints won't work.
• Workspace dependency resolution is broken in Maven 3.2.1, use 3.2.2 or newer

License

The code is licensed under Eclipse Public License 1.0, you can download a copy from http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html.