Integrated development environments are outstanding tools that help the development by offloading the mechanical tasks from the developer’s shoulders. I am using IntelliJ IDEA
When a project is more complex than a single class, then it is wise to define a project structure. There are few of build tools. We will discuss a bit about the following
- Make
- Maven
- Gradle
Make was the first build tool, and many ideas that modern Java build tools are based on are coming from the good old make .
The makeprogram was originally created in April 1976. It was created when the major programming language was C, but it is not tied to C or any other language. The description file is usually named Makefile , it might look something like the following
run : hello.jar
java -cp hello.jar HelloWorld
hello.jar : HelloWorld.class
jar -cf hello.jar HelloWorld.class
HelloWorld.class : HelloWorld.java
javac HelloWorld.javaAs we do not use make for a Java project, there is no reason to get into more details. The following are the important points that you should remember about make:
- It defines the dependencies of the individual artifacts (targets) in a declarative way
- It defines the actions to create the missing artifacts in an imperative way
This structure was invented decades ago and has survived up until now for most of the build tools.
Installing Maven
The easiest way to install Maven is to download the binary in tar.gz format. However, the setting path is not going smooth for me, what I followed the instructions here to successfully setting the path
$ cd ~/Downloads
$ tar xvf apache-maven-3.6.3-bin.tar.gz
$ mv apache-maven-3.6.3 /usr/local/
$ cd /usr/local/bin
$ sudo ln -s ../apache-maven-3.6.3/bin/mvn mvn
$ mvn -version
Apache Maven 3.6.3 (cecedd343002696d0abb50b32b541b8a6ba2883f)Maven home: /usr/local/apache-maven-3.6.3Java version: 15.0.1, vendor: Oracle Corporation, runtime: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-15.0.1.jdk/Contents/Home
Using Maven
Maven helps you create the skeleton of a new project. To do that, type the following command
mvn archetype:generateMaven will first download the actually available project types from the network and prompt you to select the one you want to use. Maven offers a default value when it asks for your choice. The default is good for the HelloWorld, and we go for.
The next thing Maven asks for is the group ID /the artifact ID and the version of the project. For example
Define value for property 'groupId': judy.java15.exampleDefine value for property 'artifactId': SortTutorialDefine value for property 'version' 1.0-SNAPSHOT: : 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT
When we have specified all the parameters and confirmed, Maven will generate the files that are needed for the project and display the report.
Take a look at the generated directory structure, you can see that it generated the following 3 files:
- SortTutorial/pox.xml
- SortTutorial/src/main/java/judy/java15/example/App.java
- SortTutorial/src/test/java/judy/java15/example/AppTest.java
As Maven was so kind and generated a sample class for the app, we can compile and run it without actual coding, just to see how we can build the project using Maven bu running
mvn packageWe will get the following output
Maven fires up, compiles and packages the project automatically.
Now you can start the code using the following command
➜ SortTutorial java -cp target/SortTutorial-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar judy.java15.example.AppHello World!
Installing Gradle
Gradle installation https://gradle.org/install/
The installation proecess is kinda similar so I will skip.
Finally, type the version to verify the installation
gradle -versionWelcome to Gradle 6.7.1!Here are the highlights of this release:- File system watching is ready for production use- Declare the version of Java your build requires- Java 15 supportFor more details see https://docs.gradle.org/6.7.1/release-notes.html------------------------------------------------------------Gradle 6.7.1
Summary
Maven is new, and it uses a different approach. Maven is also the official build tool of the Apache software foundation for the Java project.
Gradle is even newer, and it has started to catch up to Maven these days.
