Building FAQ¶

What version of JDK?¶

Our policy is waiting for the majority of our users before migrating to a new version of the Java language. In general we are held up by the slow migration of Java Enterprise Edition environments such as websphere.

GeoTools 8 uses Java 6.

How do I build from source code?¶

Complete build instructions are provided in the user guide:

Building

GeoTools makes use of the maven build system (in part to help us reused code from a number of other java projects).

To build all the modules:

mvn install -Dall

To load the modules into the eclipse IDE.

Use Windows ‣ Preferences to open the Preference Dialog. Using the tree on the left navigate to the Java > Build path > Classpath Variables preference Page.
Add an M2_REPO classpath variable pointing to your local repository where maven downloads jars.

PLATFORM

LOCAL REPOSITORY

Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\Jody\.m2\repository

Windows:

C:\Users\Jody.m2\repository

Linux and Mac:

~/.m2/repository

Generate the .project and .classpath files needed for eclipse:
```
mvn eclipse:eclipse -Dall
```

You can now use the eclipse import wizard to load existing projects.

Why is Maven 3 Slower?¶

Maven 3 is not faster out of the box with the default settings.

Gowever what is new is that you can ask it to use more than one core:

mvn install -Dall -T 2C

The above asks the build to go in “threaded” mode; using two threads for each core.

What the fastest build?¶

This is the fastest build on my machine:

mvn install -DskipTests -o -T 2C

The above options:

install (without clean) only recompiles modified code
no profiles or flags are used to build optional code; onlt the core library is built
skipTests - the tests are still built; they are just not run
o - allows the build to work “offline” (thus no external servers are checked during the build)
T 2C - builds with two threads per core

I use this configuration to quickly push all local changes into my local maven repository so I can test in a downstream application such as uDig or GeoServer.

How do I create an executable jar for my GeoTools app?¶

If you’re familiar with Maven you might have used the assembly plugin to create self-contained, executable jars. The bad news is that this generally won’t work with GeoTools. The problem is that GeoTools modules often define one or more files in its META-INF/services directory with the same names as files defined in other modules. The assembly plugin just copies files with the same name over the top of each other rather than merging their contents.

The good news is that the Maven shade plugin can be used instead and it will correctly merge the META-INF/services files from each of the GeoTools modules used by your application.

The POM below will create an executable jar for the GeoTools Quickstart module which includes all of the required GeoTools modules and their dependencies.

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>org.geotools.demo</groupId>
  <artifactId>quickstart</artifactId>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <version>1.0</version>
  <name>GeoTools Quickstart example</name>
  <url>http://geotools.org</url>

  <properties>
      <geotools.version>2.6.2</geotools.version>
  </properties>

  <build>
      <plugins>
          <plugin>
              <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
              <configuration>
                  <encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
                  <target>1.5</target>
                  <source>1.5</source>
              </configuration>
          </plugin>
          <plugin>
              <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
              <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
              <version>1.3.1</version>
              <executions>
                  <execution>
                      <phase>package</phase>
                      <goals>
                          <goal>shade</goal>
                      </goals>
                      <configuration>
                          <transformers>
                              <!-- This bit sets the main class for the executable jar as you otherwise -->
                              <!-- would with the assembly plugin                                       -->
                              <transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ManifestResourceTransformer">
                                  <manifestEntries>
                                      <Main-Class>org.geotools.demo.Quickstart</Main-Class>
                                  </manifestEntries>
                              </transformer>
                              <!-- This bit merges the various GeoTools META-INF/services files         -->
                              <transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ServicesResourceTransformer"/>
                          </transformers>
                      </configuration>
                  </execution>
              </executions>
          </plugin>
      </plugins>
  </build>

  <dependencies>
      <dependency>
          <groupId>org.geotools</groupId>
          <artifactId>gt-shapefile</artifactId>
          <version>${geotools.version}</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
          <groupId>org.geotools</groupId>
          <artifactId>gt-epsg-hsql</artifactId>
          <version>${geotools.version}</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
          <groupId>org.geotools</groupId>
          <artifactId>gt-swing</artifactId>
          <version>${geotools.version}</version>
      </dependency>
      <dependency>
          <groupId>junit</groupId>
          <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
          <version>4.5</version>
          <scope>test</scope>
      </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

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