Prepare to laugh at me, because today is my day for discovering that the sky is blue. I recently discovered something that most people almost certainly know but hasn't been clear to me for the last 12 months until about 10 minutes ago.
I thought I kept hearing that I can specify repositories in my settings.xmlfile and make those the repos I use with all my builds, but this never seems to work for me and wanted to work out why. In my installation, I have a) a maven-proxy to "central" that handles all of my maven2 dependencies hosted at http://foo.com:9999/repository b) a non-proxied m1 repo that I use to acquire some artifacts from java.net( https://maven-repository.dev.java.net/nonav/repository/ ) maven-proxy doesn't like to deal with the java.net repo for some reason, calling it an unknown upstream repository type, so it's necessary to add another repository to my <repositories> in order to get those dependencies. I thought the following settings.xml would work: <settings> <mirrors> <mirror> <id>proxy</id> <name>Maven Mirror Managed by maven-proxy</name> <url>http://foo.com:9999/repository</url> <mirrorOf>central</mirrorOf> </mirror> </mirrors> <servers> <server> <id>local</id> <username>maven</username> <privateKey>/home/malvis/.ssh/id_rsa</privateKey> <passphrase>thisisthepassphraseformykey</passphrase> </server> <server> <id>local-ftp</id> <username>maven</username> <password>maven</password> <filePermissions>666</filePermissions> <directoryPermissions>777</directoryPermissions> </server> <server> <id>site-local</id> <username>maven</username> <password>maven</password> <filePermissions>666</filePermissions> <directoryPermissions>777</directoryPermissions> </server> </servers> <profiles> <profile> <activation> <activeByDefault /> </activation> <repositories> <repository> <id>java.net</id> <url> https://maven-repository.dev.java.net/nonav/repository</url> <layout>legacy</layout> </repository> </repositories> </profile> </profiles> </settings> The java.net repository was not picked up by builds. The builds that fail specify a parent pom which specifies no <repositories> itself. I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that by specifying a <repository> in a <profile> that was <activeByDefault> would make my build pick up that profile and all it's <repositories> which I thought would include the mirrored "central" as well as "java.net". The odd part was that the build DOES pick up the fact that "central" is mirrored at the "foo.com" maven-proxy but not that it should include the " java.net" repo in it's list of repositories to try. Well, if I gave the profile a name and specified it on the command line the whole thing worked. But why not when I didn't specify the profile? It was, after all, <activeByDefault/> Now, here comes the "I'm slow" punchline. <activeByDefault/> is not a self-contained tag, but rather a boolean setting. Well, duh! I KNEW this somewhere in the down in sub-coccal region, but it slipped by me the whole time. Instead of <activeByDefault/>, which I incorrectly thought was the means to get a profile automatically activated, one must <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault> Why did I think this? Two reasons, I guess, and not very good ones. One, I've seen very few working examples of someone elses's "real" settings.xml. After all, there are passwords and stuff in there and we're not supposed to post that sort of thing on the net. Two, because in the settings.xml reference, it's listed as a self-contained tag and I just copied it out of the reference. That's right! I'm a cut-and-paste junkie. Turns out the reference is NOT anything of an example. At some point I scrolled down and noticed that it was listed as a "flag" and even at my very slowest I can usually recognize that as an explicit boolean. And I've worked with practically every other tag that's listed as a closed tag but actually contains a value. But <activeByDefault/> clearly slipped by my aging neurons. Once I'd figured this out, I went back to Better Builds, searched for "activeByDefault", saw an example of it's proper use (p.106 in case you felt like pointing and laughing early), and was so embarassed that I felt the need to post it here, receive the derision of my peers, and thus be properly chastised. OK. Everyone throw rocks and mud at me now. I'll eventually live down the shame, but I didn't want anyone else to have to endure it in case they had the same breakdown in thinking that I experienced. :) Mykel -- Never wear anything that panics the cat. -- P. J. O'Rourke
