Nature and Builder

Overview

Since version 0.3.0 Mevenide provides its own nature and builder. Mevenide builder allows to activate/disactivate goals depending on the files that have changed since last Maven run. Mevenide supports also AutoBuild now through the same mechanism.

The Builder is associated with the Mevenide Nature and only the projects that have Mevenide Nature can benefit from the features described here.

Nature

Mevenide Nature is merely a marker whose sole purpose is to activate Mevenide Builder for specific projects. Mevenide nature is attached by default to New projects created through the "New Maven Project" Wizard.

It can added to or removed from a project through the project contextual menu (Screenshot 1).



Screenshot 1 Adding and removing Mevenide nature

Builder

Builder activation works in a similar way than regular Maven launch (describe process arguments basedir through the same interface), but requires additional settings to specify which files modification will trigger the activation of a particular goal.

The builder configuration dialog can be popped up through the 'Project' menu (Screenshot 2).



Screenshot 2 Builder configuration menu

This brings up a similar dialog than the Mevenide External Tools integration dialog (Figure 2). The big difference lies in the third tab : in the 'Patterns tab' you must specify which file modifications will trigger goal activation - eventually you can specify there that the goals should be auto-launched (Screenshot 3).



Screenshot 3 Builder configuration : specifying file pattern

The custom configuration will then populate the builder menu ; the goals to be launched being displayed - as opposed as the configuration name (Screenshot 4).



Screenshot 4 Populated Builder configuration menu

Important Configurations with auto build set to true are not displayed in the menu.

Items added to the menu are disactivated until a change in the workspace matches the specified pattern, then the items will be activated on a per project basis, and will be disactivated once run.

Important Note

While running Maven through Mevenide if you see this message ZoneInfo: D:\dev\Java\jrockit-jdk1.5.0_02\lib\zi\ZoneInfoMappings (The system cannot find the path specified) then you will most probably need to set append '/jre' to the 'Java Home' preference in 'Maven | Locations' preference page.