Fast Web Development with the Hightide and Maven

Hightide Convenience Dependencies

JavaEE APIs

When developing a new JavaEE webapp, you need to include a number of dependencies in your pom.xml which represent the APIs your webapp will reference (think JNDI, JTA etc). Hightide makes this fast and easy by providing a single dependency you can include in your pom.xml which will automatically transitively include all the usual apis. Use it thus:

<dependencies>
   . . .
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.webtide.hightide</groupId>
      <artifactId>hightide-provided-apis</artifactId>
      <version>6.1H.4-beta</version>
          <type>pom</type>
      <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>
   . . .
<dependencies>

Hightide Dependencies

To make development with hightide even easier, we've provided a single dependency which you can include in your project's pom.xml which will automatically transitively include all the jars that are provided by hightide at runtime. Unlike the Hightide APIs Dependency, it will put the implementation jars for those APIs on the classpath. Use this when your code explicitly access the implemention code rather than the JavaEE api.

<dependency>
      <groupId>com.webtide.hightide</groupId>
      <artifactId>hightide-server-dependencies</artifactId>
      <version>6.1H.4-beta</version>
      <type>pom</type>
      <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Hightide Plugin

mvn hightide:run

This goal is used in-situ on a Maven project without first requiring that the project is assembled into a war, saving time during the development cycle. The plugin forks a parallel lifecycle to ensure that the "compile" phase has been completed before invoking Hightide. This means that you do not need to explicity execute a "mvn compile" first. It also means that a "mvn clean hightide:run" will ensure that a full fresh compile is done before invoking Hightide. This goal is similar to the mvn jetty:run goal, however, all services found in standalone hightide - such as JTA (Atomikos), JDBC (Derby) and JMS (ActiveMQ) - are automatically started and available to the webapp, signifcantly easing testing and promoting rapid development.

As with the mvn jetty:run target, the plugin can be configured to run continuously, scanning for changes in the project and automatically performing a hot redeploy when necessary. This allows the developer to concentrate on coding changes to the project using their IDE of choice and have those changes immediately and transparently reflected in the running web container, eliminating development time that is wasted on rebuilding, reassembling and redeploying.

Required Parameters

Optional Parameters

mvn hightide:run-war

This goal is used to assemble your webapp into a war and automatically deploy it to Hightide.

Once invoked, the plugin can be configured to run continuously, scanning for changes in the project and to the war file and automatically performing a hot redeploy when necessary.

You may also specify the location of a jetty.xml file whose contents will be applied before any plugin configuration. This can be used, for example, to deploy a static webapp that is not part of your maven build.

Required Parameters

Optional Parameters

mvn hightide:run-exploded

This goal is used to assemble your webapp into an exploded war and automatically deploy it to Hightide.

Once invoked, the plugin can be configured to run continuously, scanning for changes in the pom.xml and to WEB-INF/web.xml, WEB-INF/classes or WEB-INF/lib and hot redeploy when a change is detected.

You may also specify the location of a jetty.xml file whose contents will be applied before any plugin configuration. This can be used, for example, to deploy a static webapp that is not part of your maven build.

Required Parameters

Optional Parameters