If you already use Maven, developing a Android application isn’t going to be a stretch. There’s a very active community of open source projects for maven-droid development, and the Android SDK artifacts are available on Central.

You’ve probably noticed increased advertising for Google’s Android platform over the past few months. The mobile wars are heating up with the release of iPhone 4 and Android-based phones seem to be gaining market share at a rapid pace. Even if you don’t already develop for a mobile platform, you, your company, the organization you are a part of has started to have discussions about developing applications for these smart phones.

If you are thinking about mobile development with Maven, Here are some pointers to some great resources to get you started:

• Android SDK artifacts are now available in Central. This means that you can create a project and get started without having to manually install artifacts.
• Manfred Moser has some free sample code and Maven projects
• There is an active and rapidly developing m2eclipse Android plugin from Hugo Josefson and Ricardo Gladwell which adds Android support to m2eclipse.

If you are looking at mobile development, you’ve got two big choices: Apple’s iOS 4 or the Android platform. I’ve used both, I’m impressed with Apple’s tools: they have great APIs, XCode is a really capable tool, but learning a whole new set of tools does seem to be a high barrier for most developers. Droid does Maven, and because of that, there is a much lower barrier to experimentation.

When a technology connects with a tool like Maven, it opens up new possibilities for developers.

The Eclipse 3.6 (Helios) release added a new, easier way to install the m2eclipse plugin.   If you want to start using m2eclipse, download Eclipse 3.6 (Helios), and use the Eclipse Marketplace.   To open the Eclipse Marketplace, go to the Eclipse Help menu and select Eclipse Marketplace…

The first time you open the Eclipse Marketplace, you will be asked to select a Marketplace. Select the Eclipse Marketplace and click Next.  Maven Integration for Eclipse is separated into two components: the Core of Maven Integration for Eclipse and an optional package of extra, unsupported components. To install the core component of Maven Integration for Eclipse, open the Eclipse Marketplace, select the Search tab, and search for “Maven Integration” as shown in the following figure. Click on the Install button to the right of “Maven Integration for Eclipse”.

Once you click on Install, Eclipse will download a list of available components from the remote update site and present you with a list of available features in the Maven Integration for Eclipse plugin as shown in the following figure. Select the single, required component named “Maven Integration for Eclipse (Required)”, and click on the Finish button.

Eclipse will then ask you to agree to the licenses for Maven Integration for Eclipse in the Review Licenses step shown in the following figure. Maven Integration for Eclipse is distributed under the Eclipse Public License version 1.0. If you agree with the conditions of this license, select “I accept the terms of the license agreement” and click on the Finish button.

During the installation process, Eclipse may warn you that the software you are installing contains “unsigned content”. If you see the dialog shown in the following figure, click on OK to continue the installation process.

Once m2eclipse has been installed, Eclipse will prompt you to either restart or apply changes to a running Eclipse. At this stage of the installation, you should click on Restart Now to restart your Eclipse instance. After a successful restart, Maven Integration for Eclipse will be installed.

Sonatype is a gold sponsor at EclipseCon so we have a room for the day to some extra presentations and demos. If you’re at EclipseCon and you’re interested in Maven, M2Eclipse, Nexus, or Tycho then please come to the Camino room on the second floor!

10:00am: Developing with Maven 3.0 and M2Eclipse 1.0

A discussion of the changes that have been made in Maven 3.0 to better support interoperation with Eclipse, the roadmap toward the 1.0 release, and an overview of the current features. We will also be talking about Maven Studio for Eclipse, Sonatype’s new Maven-focused Eclipse IDE.

11:00am: Managing p2 Repositories and Repository Interoperability with Nexus Professional

A discussion of how Sonatype is trying to simplify the management of P2 repositories with Nexus.

1:00pm: Tycho Workshop & Demo Extravaganza!

Anyone who is interested in an alternative to PDEBuild, Buckminster, or Athena. Tycho is a set of Maven 3.0 plugins which make up the next generation headless build solution for Eclipse-based products and OSGi bundles. This will hands on workshop where we will provide demonstrations and help you convert your build to Tycho!

See you there!

This video demonstrates how easy it is to add dependencies using m2eclipse.    Because m2eclipse understands how to interact with a repository index, it can quickly locate a dependency by class name or by GAV coordinate.    Don’t know which artifact contains a particular class?   Just start writing code and use an Eclipse Quick Fix to search all Maven repositories for an artifact that contains a particular class.    Want to inspect and browse a Maven repository? Don’t use a web browser.  Use the built-in dependency search feature in m2eclipse.

One of the most compelling features of m2eclipse is the ability to quickly generate new Maven projects using the New Maven project wizard. This post and the associated video demonstrate the steps to create a simple Maven project using the New Maven project wizard to select the Maven Quickstart archetype.

To create a simple project using the New Maven project wizard:

1. Select File > New Project. This should display the “New Project” dialog.
2. In the “New Project” Dialog, expand the Maven folder, and select “Maven Project”.
3. Click Next. The next screen provides options for customizing the location of your new Maven project. If you are storing the new project in your workspace, you can supply the directory on this page.
4. Click Next. The next screen lists all of the available Maven Archetypes, select the Maven Quickstart Archetype which should be listed under the group id “org.apache.maven.archetypes”.
5. Click Next. On the next screen, supply a Group Id, Artifact Id, and Version for your new project.
6. Click Finish and m2eclipse will use the Maven Quickstart Archetype to generate a new Maven project in your Eclipse workspace.

Note about 0.9.8 Workspace Incompatibility: If you are using m2eclipse 0.10.0 with a workspace that contains projects created under m2eclipse 0.9.8, you must remove the workspaceState.ser file. The workspaceState.ser file is located within the workspace directory in $workspacedir/.metadata/.plugins/org.maven.ide.eclipse/workspaceState.ser. If you remove this file, m2eclipse 0.10.0 will regenerate it as needed.

To install m2eclipse, use the following Eclipse update site to install the core of the m2eclipse plugin. This Core update site contains a single component: “Maven Integration for Eclipse (Required)”. When you install this component you will be installing all of the core Wizards, the POM Editor, Maven Repository integration, and Maven integration. This post provides a set of detailed instructions for installing m2eclipse 0.10.0.

m2eclipse Core Update Site: http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/sites/m2e

IMPORTANT NOTE: You cannot upgrade from m2eclipse 0.9.8 or m2eclipse 0.9.9 to m2eclipse 0.10.0. If you are running m2eclipse 0.9.8 or 0.9.9 you must either uninstall m2eclipse from your Eclipse installation or start with a fresh installation of Eclipse.

To install this plugin in the Eclipse IDE:

1. Select Help > Install New Software. This should display the “Install” dialog.
2. Paste the Update Site URL into the field named “Work with:” and press Enter. Pressing Enter should cause Eclipse to update list of available plugins and components.
3. Choose the component listed under m2eclipse: “Maven Integration for Eclipse (Required)”.
4. Click Next. Eclipse will then check to see if there are any issues which would prevent a successful installation.
5. Click Next and agree to the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0.
6. Click Finish to begin the installation process. Eclipse will then download and install the necessary components.
7. Once the installation process is finished, Eclipse will ask you if you want to restart the IDE. Sonatype strongly recommends that you restart your IDE after installing m2eclipse.

Note about 0.9.8 Workspace Incompatibility: If you are using m2eclipse 0.10.0 with a workspace that contains projects created under m2eclipse 0.9.8, you must remove the workspaceState.ser file. The workspaceState.ser file is located within the workspace directory in $workspacedir/.metadata/.plugins/org.maven.ide.eclipse/workspaceState.ser. If you remove this file, m2eclipse 0.10.0 will regenerate it as needed.

m2eclipse Extras Update Site: http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/sites/m2e-extras

This is the first production release of m2eclipse in more than a year, and it couldn’t come any sooner.  In this release, you’ll find that we’ve separated the update sites. There is now a core update site and an extras update site which contains optional components.  For more details about the installation, please read the installation instructions on the m2eclipse site.

One important note about the 0.10.0 release: you cannot upgrade from 0.9.8 or 0.9.9-dev. You must either uninstall the previous version from your Eclipse installation, or you should start with a new installation of Eclipse. The recommended version of Eclipse for this release is 3.5.1. You can download this eclipse distribution from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads.    The rest of this post details what is new and noteworthy about the m2eclipse 0.10.0 release.

What’s New and Noteworthy in this release?

• Stability – We’ve spent the last year working on stability and performance. If you are used to using m2eclipse 0.9.8, you’ll notice a remarkable performance improvement between these two versions.

• Integrated with Maven 3.0 – This release of m2eclipse includes Maven 3.0-alpha-6+. One of the primary drivers of the Maven 3.0 effort was to reimplement some of the “guts” of Maven to make it easier to embed within frameworks like the Eclipse IDE. If you are wondering what changes need to be made to your projects to use Maven 3.0, the answer is “none”. Maven 3.0 is a revolutionary upgrade that will enable the next generation of development tools, but you don’t have change a thing in your project. It should all just work.
  • Compatibility with Maven 3.0 CLI behaviour
  • Major performance improvements compared to 0.9.8
  • Full support for proxy/mirror/auth configuration as per settings.xml
  • Note for Maven 2 Users: If you need to configure m2eclipse to use a Maven 2 installation, you can do so in the m2eclipse preferences.

• Maven Project Lifecycle Mapping framework – This framework gives you the ability to customize the Maven plugins and plugin goals which are involved in your development cycle. If you need to configure the Maven Resources plugin to update resources every time your project is built within Eclipse, there is a new tab available in the m2eclipse POM Editor.
  • Developed using the new Project Configurator API
  • Eclipse project configuration and build can be fully customized for project types and individual projects
  • Implementation of plexus-build-api to allow mojos participate in eclipse incremental/full builds
  • Support for modello, plexus metadata, antlr3, build-helper, resources (from site-extras)

• Reimplemented nexus-indexer integration and repositories view – m2eclipse is very tightly integrated with the Nexus indexer, and it uses it to quickly locate dependencies and artifacts. This release adds a new Repositories View which gives you the ability to inspect, modify, and manage the Maven repositories (including your Local Maven Repository) in an easy-to-use interface.
  • m2eclipse now tracks repositories defined in settings.xml and project pom.xml files
  • New option for disabled, min, or full index details for each Repository
  • Supports the new Incremental Index Standard
  • Remote index files are cached in maven local repository and shared between workspaces, as a result workspace initialization in m2eclipse is much faster.

• Preliminary eclipse 3.6 support – While we don’t yet recommend the use of Eclipse 3.6, this release does start to add preliminary support for the platform.

The following video is a demonstration of archive browsing and Javadoc browsing in Nexus Professional 1.5.0. This video also demonstrates the use of m2eclipse to retrieve source and Javadoc JARs from a repository manager.

Highlights of this video demonstration:

I’m happy to announce that Pascal Rapicault, lead of the Equinox p2 team, is going to be joining Sonatype.   As lead of p2, Pascal’s work has helped define the way that components are designed, developed, and deployed within the Eclipse framework.  I’m confident that his work is going to be an essential part of what allows Sonatype to create some of the Next Generation development infrastructure I’ve been describing over the past few weeks.

Here’s an excerpt from Pascal’s blog announcing his arrival at Sonatype:

I’m very excited about the opportunity to join Sonatype because they have an exciting portfolio of products and a commitment to open source (Maven, m2eclipse, …). Therefore I will continue to be heavily involved in the Eclipse community and provide leadership for the p2 project. I look forward to being a part of the Eclipse team from a new perspective and have no doubt that I will run into other members of the Eclipse team in the future.

We’re happy to have him on board, and you can look forward to see his work and his writing on this blog in the months to come.

For my talk today at JFokus today I’ve taken the liberty of starting some notes for folks interested in attending. There’s a lot to cover and so I thought I would try the approach of providing some material up front so the session can be more of a dialog. I’m going to attempt to cover everything in the picture below and save the demos folks might want to see for the Sonatype booth. Happy to chat with folks and do any demos before and after the presentation. Just stop by!

Maven Stack Infrastructure

I’m going to talk about some of the under pinnings of the technologies we’re using as part of our Maven work. Why we selected the technologes and some of the current work that’s happening.

• Guice
• From Plexus to Guice (#1): Why Guice?
• From Plexus to Guice (#2): The Guice/Plexus Bridge and Custom Bean Injection
• From Plexus to Guice (#3): Creating a Guice Bean Extension Layer
• Peaberry
• Apache Shiro
• Enunciate

Maven

There are several develops going on in the various Maven projects. Maven 3.x is on the way, but we have some very interesting work happing with OSGi within our Tycho project. The Flexmojos project and NAR (the C/++ framework for Maven) are also popular.

Tycho

• Tycho Site
• Tycho @ Github
• Tycho/PDE Integration
• P2 Site

Flexmojos

• Flexmojos Site

NAR

• NAR Site
• NAR @ Github

M2Eclipse

The primary IDE integration we work on at Sonatype. The most important thing to talk about in M2Eclipse is the configuration framework.

• M2Eclipse Site

Hudson

Most of the work we’ve been doing on Hudson is still not really good enough for public consumption but we’re testing the changes we’re making on the Sonatype grid.

Hudson Site

Nexus

• Nexus Site
• Nexus: Improving Maven Central and Supporting the Maven Ecosystem
• Selecting OSS Software: 10 Questions Answered for Sonatype Nexus
• OSS Repository Hosting
• OSGi Central
• Ruby Central (We’re working on making that publicly available

Proviso

Proviso is not publicly released yet, but Alin and I have been working together to get our provisioning framework ready for a public release.

Git

We are starting to use Git heavily and soon likely exclusively. We are helping out on the EGit, and JGit projects at Eclipse and we’re trying to put a little Git server together based on JGit, MINA, and Apache Shiro.

• JGit Site
• EGit Site
• Tycho building EGit/JGit
• SShJGit @ Github

Maven Extensions

I’ll chat about these in the talk.

• Polyglot Maven Site
• Polyglot Maven @ Github
• Maven Shell
• Maven Shell @ Github

I’ll likely keep adding to the entry leading up the talk, but I thought I would get the ball rolling!